A Quinnipiac Poll released on August 11 shows the following for the New Jersey gubernatorial race: Chris Christie (Republican) 46%, Jon Corzine (Democrat) 40%, Chris Daggett (independent) 7%, other or undecided 7%.
No candidate for Governor of New Jersey, other than the Democratic or Republican nominee, has polled as much as 5% since 1913, when the Progressive Party nominee, Everett Colby, polled 11.0%.
The New Jersey ballot is designed to minimize the vote for minor party and independent candidates. In almost all counties, the Democratic and Republican Party columns are headed by the words “Democratic” or “Republican” in very large print. All other candidates are squeezed into other columns headed by “Nomination by Petition.” That column is a confusing jumble of the other candidates, with any partisan label in tiny print next to their names. The order of these candidates is different in each county. New Jersey is the only state in the nation that gives party column headings to the qualified parties but not to the other parties. Also New Jersey has gone longer than any state (since 1920) in not recognizing any qualified parties except the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Sad state of affairs this is.
I will be voting for Chris Daggett, and proudly.
From all that I have heard,
he is a ‘good guy’!
— Donald Raymond Lake
“Duh media” don’t care if he is polling 7% or 70%. They will simply refuse to cover him.
Chris Daggett isn’t getting high scores in polls because he’s a good candidate, he’s getting high scores in polls because there are a lot of anti-Corzine Democrats.
If it was just a 3 way race between Corzine, the Republican, and Daggett, yes, Daggett would get 10%, a dead fish would get 10% too.
Because there are going to be like a dozen non-major party candidates on the ballot though, voters will just discount them all and vote for who they see as the lesser of two evils.
How in the world is New Jersey’s combination of ballot access law and ballot layout even remotely constitutional? And why hasn’t this been challenged in court?