New Polls

Fairleigh Dickinson: Corzine 48%, Forrester 38% of 635 LIKELY voters.

Monmouth University/Gannet: Corzine 46%, Forrester 38% of 463 LIKELY voters.

Quinnipiac: Corzine 48%, Forrester 44% of 874 LIKELY voters.

That last one is a little too close for my taste. Not to fear, though; the polls are ranging widely. A Star-Ledger/Eagleton/Rutgers poll from Sept. 12 had Corzine up by 18 points, once again of likely voters.

As always, the most interesting statistics in the Quinnipiac poll are not the big ones. For the question "Regardless of how you intend to vote, which candidate for Governor do you think would do a better job reducing property taxes? " 43% said Forrester, 39% said Corzine. For the question "Regardless of how you intend to vote, which candidate for Governor do you think would do a better job ending corruption in government? " 40% said Forrester, 38% said Corzine. Corzine placed ahead of Forrester in similar questions about solving the budget crisis, taxes in general, improving transportation and fighting overdevelopment and sprawl.

In other campaign news, Tom Hester reported in The Times of Trenton on Monday that Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Jeff Pawlowski, who earned my admiration by selling certificates of influence for donations and publicity on eBay earlier this year, would be producing a video of his answers to the questions posed in the recent NJN debate. He was kept out of the debate because it wasn't an "official" debate and NJN had editorial privilege to choose whom to invite. (Apparently he wouldn't suffer irreparable harm by not participating in the debate; I guess the court felt that a lack of voter recognition doesn't do irreparable harm to a candidate. Ask Todd Calliguire to comment on that one. Granted, according to that Quinnipiac poll 86% of likely voters didn't even watch.)

Anyway, I emailed the Pawlowski campaign to find out the status of the response tape and have yet to hear back. I am very interested to hear his comments; I'll post about it when there's more info. A third party voice in an election is an important thing and should be heard. (Especially when some are leaving the major parties and may be looking for a place to go.)