I'm not too sure though. For one thing he still seems to be gaining in the polls. And even though a lot of his supporters are weakly committed Jon Corzine and Chris Christie are so unpopular that they may truly end up deciding to cast a protest vote rather than grudgingly picking one of them.
Polls released this week, three weeks before the election, have shown Daggett at an average of 14%. I decided to look at all the independent or third party candidates who have received at least 5% of the vote in a Gubernatorial contest since 2006 and see where they were polling roughly three weeks prior to election day and how that compared to their final share of the vote. (I couldn't find any information on where Andrew Halcro, who got 10% of the vote in Alaska, was polling at this stage. Also I have noted the number of polls I could find from a comparable time period to calculate these averages.)
| Candidate | Mid-Oct. Poll Avg. | Final Vote Share | |
| | Rich Whitney | 10 | 10 |
| | Barbara Merrill | 12 | 22 |
| | Pat Lamarche | 9 | 10 |
| | Christy Mihos | 8 | 7 |
| | Peter Hutchinson | 7 | 6 |
| | Carole Keeton Strayhorn | 18 | 18 |
| | Kinky Friedman | 16 | 12 |
| | Anthony Pollina | 20 | 22 |
| | John Georges | 10 | 14 |
With the exception of Kinky Friedman none of the candidates did more than a point worse than they were doing in the polls three weeks before the election. On average they even did a little more than a point better.
It certainly is common for a third party candidate polling well over the summer to end up being a nonfactor. But if you're still in the game at this point you're usually going to end up staying in it. I bet Daggett will truly end up getting double digits at the polls on election day.
3 comments:
Where were these people located on tha ballot?
There will be 17 candidates on the NJ ballot with Corzine and Christie taking up the top 2.
Daggett is among the remaining 15 and in just two counties he's placed third on the ballot.
I think there's a distinction between 3rd-party/indy candidates who find some way to become visible, and those who get ignored by the media and don't have the money to buy visibility.
Daggett doesn't have much money, but he's included in the debates and he's getting a LOT of free media. And now the RGA is attacking him on TV, which I think helps him more than it hurts him because the ad is a poor one that asserts Daggett is the same as Corzine. I don't think that simple-minded conflation sells at this stage when voters are pretty well convinced Daggett is different from the others.
Go Daggett!!
Help Spread the word. Its time for change in NJ.
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