Three Lessons From Primary Night
Jun. 04 Election 2014, Uncategorized no comments
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
A few thoughts as the dust settles from Tuesday night:
(1) #NJSen: All other things being equal, targeting matters most…
Jeff Bell
We’re going to spend some time in the days ahead analyzing Jeff Bell‘s surprising U.S. Senate primary victory, Save Jerseyans, having defied conventional wisdom and won a plurality of the vote despite shunning the county convention circuit and carrying not a single line. Residual name recognition? Maybe a little. Benefiting from opponents’ mistakes? Sure, to a degree.
The most obvious explanation: solid targeting.
It’s all anecdotal, but I’ve heard from numerous reliable GOP primary voters living in different counties who reported hearing from only one candidate in their mailboxes over the past couple of weeks: Mr. Bell, a former Senate candidate and speech writer for Ronald Reagan who hasn’t resided in New Jersey for three decades prior to this instant contest but who is determined to make an issue out of monetary policy and, specifically, reviving the gold standard.
Notwithstanding institutional disadvantages (and a less-than-orthodox messaging strategy), Bell’s relatively modestly-priced targeted mail campaign apparently allowed him to win populous counties like Bergen and Morris where there wasn’t an awarded line and place a respectable second place in places like Atlantic where someone else had the line. The end result: a sub-30% win in a crowded field.
The Bell strategy likely would’ve come up short in a higher-turnout model or if any of Bell’s opponents had had real resources at their disposal but they didn’t, did they? So there you have it…
(2) #CD12: Bridgegate – or at least Chris Christie – is a winning issue among Democrats…
Bonnie Watson Coleman
This one’s pretty simple. New FDU poll results released Primary Day found Governor Chris Christie rocking a weak but “stabilized” 44% job approval rating in New Jersey. Reading deeper, however, leads to the discovery that Democrats continue to slip away from the Governor. Only about one quarters of Democrats approve of his performance; over 60% have adopted the opposite opinion, representing a major reversal from one year ago in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Newly-minted CD12 nominee Bonnie Watson Coleman didn’t exactly anticipate this trend when she was forced to quit the SCI after baselessly and inappropriately calling for Chris Christie to resign. It worked for her all the same.
Oh, and that time that her major adversary told Mercer Democrats that they were her enemy? And then Mercer took her at her word and turned out 17,000 voters to defeat her? That also played a role (h/t Olivia Nuzzi).
– See more at: https://savejersey.com/2014/06/lonegan-macarthur-primary-new-jersey/#sthash.wsZrKVKG.dpuf
