New Jersey's GOP Primary: Lonegan Isn't Christie's Biggest Problem

By Bill Pascoe , CQ politics

With five weeks left until Primary Election Day, the Republican gubernatorial primary in New Jersey just kicked into high gear.

But are the rival campaigns -- and GOP primary voters -- overlooking the most salient data?

Is Jon Corzine -- who just registered the highest-ever job disapproval ratings on record for a New Jersey Governor -- nevertheless on a glide path to reelection?

Political New Jersey has been aflutter since last Wednesday, when the release of two new surveys -- one by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, and one by Strategic Vision -- focused attention on the threat posed to establishment Republican frontrunner Chris Christie by conservative challenger Steve Lonegan.

Quinnipiac has a long history of polling in New Jersey.

Quinnipiac, as it always has, told us how the poll was conducted, including telling us the size of the subsample of likely GOP voters.

Strategic Vision, by contrast, didn't tell us what was the size of the subsample of GOP voters, or tell us whether the survey respondents were screened for a likelihood to vote.

Consequently, most campaign veterans -- at least those who aren't already on the Christie campaign payroll -- focused on the Quinnipiac numbers.

That Quinnipiac survey indicated that the GOP gubernatorial primary was a lot tighter than most people had believed it to be.

According to that survey, Christie's lead over Lonegan was a mere 9 points, at 46-37 percent, among the subsample of 486 likely GOP primary voters.

Read more >>> Here