Barack Obama would easily win New Jersey again if he had to stand for reelection today, even if Republicans put forth Chris Christie as their candidate. Obama leads Christie by a 17 point margin in a hypothetical contest, the same amount Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich trail by. Mitt Romney does the best of the leading Republican contenders in the state, trailing Obama by 15, and Sarah Palin has one of her worst performances in any state we've polled to date, lagging the President by a whooping 30 points.
Christie still has decent approval numbers for a Republican in a blue state, with 48% of voters happy with the job he's doing to 45% who express disapproval. Republicans are pretty unanimous in their support for his performance, independents give him a positive 55/39 spread, and even 23% of Democrats give him good marks which is not a bad amount of crossover support in this political climate. His popularity with Democrats and independents does not, however, extend to support in a possible Presidential bid. Only 7% of Democrats are actually willing to vote for him over Obama and with independents he just breaks even with Obama at 42%. That's quite a contrast to the enormous margin he won them by against Jon Corzine in 2009.
None of the other Republicans are competitive with Obama either. Part of that is a function of New Jersey voters generally being happy with the job the President's doing- 51% of them approve of his job performance to 43% disapproving. It's obviously a strongly blue leaning state to begin with and beyond that there are more GOP voters- 12% who approve of Obama than there are Democrats- 9%- who disapprove. Obama continues to lack popularity with independents in the state but his good numbers with Democrats outweigh that.
Beyond Obama's popularity though the current crop of top Republicans simply has very little appeal to voters in New Jersey. Mitt Romney with a 35/41 favorability and Mike Huckabee at 32/41 have marginally bad numbers. Newt Gingrich at 29/49 and Sarah Palin at 27/65 have exceptionally poor ones. Most telling, none of the GOP hopefuls wins greater than 9% of the Democratic vote against Obama- it is simply not possible for a Republican to win a state as dark blue as New Jersey without more support across party lines than that.
Barack Obama has a lot of worries as he gears up to seek reelection next year, but it doesn't look like winning New Jersey again is one of them.
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There were 12 states that Obama won with a lower percentage of votes than New Jersey. If New Jersey is competitive it means Obama has already lost. I assume you tested Bob Menendez.
Obviously it's not competitive since he's winning here by greater margins than he did in 2008. We'll have Menendez numbers tomorrow.
Being up by 17 against his closest potential Republican challenger is a long, long way from being 'competitive.' There are only 8 states where John McCain won by a larger margin than 17 (plus Nebraska's 3rd district), for a total of 47 electoral votes. There are 13 states (plus one Maine district, counting DC as a state) where Obama won by more than 17%, comprising 167 electoral votes.
If New Jersey was competitive, then yes, that would mean the playing field was so far tilted to the right that Obama would be a massive underdog. Similarly, if Arizona was in play, that would suggest that Republicans would be so far down as to be near non-viability. But Obama won NJ by 15.53% in 2008, and is up by 17% in this poll. That's dominating, not competing.
The Palin numbers have me salivating. I really just don't think we (those of us who want Obama to win big in 2012) are lucky enough to get her as the GOP nominee... but man that would be sweet.
This first poll I've seen since Christie's Disney World trip. It doesn't look like it damaged his approval ratings.
This is PPP people, Democrat hacks.
Wow! This is a crock of the worst sort. I predict that this "poll" will be undressed by Thursday.
Going to stop by on Thursday to admit you were wrong, Gutless Wonder? Or that PPP is statistically one of the most accurate pollsters around?
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