The long view in New Jersey

Chris Christie's lead in our New Jersey polling peaked at the end of July, when he held a 50-36 lead. Now he's at just 40%. Where'd he lose all that support?

The answer is pretty much everywhere. Christie's seen double digit decreases in his share of the vote among conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, conservative Republicans, and independents. The only meaningful voting blocs he hasn't lost much ground with are liberal and moderate Democrats, and that's largely a function of his never having had much support with those groups to begin with.

We didn't include Chris Daggett in that July poll where Christie had a 14 point lead, and if you look now at Christie's decline in those groups Daggett's share of the vote is almost equal to the difference between where Christie was in July and where Christie is now.

There's not much doubt Daggett's been bleeding Christie's support, putting Jon Corzine in position to win a surprise victory. The question now is how many of those marginal Daggett voters Christie can win back in the final three weeks.

Here's the full July to October comparison data on Christie's drop:

Group	Christie % June	Christie % October	Daggett %
Lib. Dems	4	4	9
Mod. Dems	21	16	9
Cons. Dems	51	37	16
Mod. Reps	77	64	13
Cons. Reps	94	79	13
Independents	54	42	19