The new survey of New Jersey from Public Policy Polling (D) confirms the trend of this gubernatorial race coming down the wire, with Republican Chris Christie ahead of Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine by just one point.
The numbers: Christie 40%, Corzine 39%, and independent Chris Daggett 13%, with a ±4.1% margin of error. A month ago, Christie had a much bigger lead of 44%-35%-13%.
The pollster also asked respondents about an emerging question in this race: Is Corzine attacking Christie for his weight?
Only 35% of respondents said yes, Corzine is trying to make an issue of Christie’s weight, with 47% saying Corzine is not doing so. Meanwhile, 11% said that Christie’s weight is a legitimate issue, to 81% who said it is not. In addition, 19% said his weight makes them less likely to vote for him, compared to 4% who said it makes them more likely to support him, and 78% saying it makes no difference.
The poll also finds that Daggett could potentially be sapping more support from Christie than from Corzine, with 48% of his respondents listing Christie as their second choice to 34% for Corzine. However, an important caveat here is that the sub-sample has a margin of error of ±11.4%, PPP tells me, so be careful about taking it as gospel truth — though it is an interesting data point, nevertheless.
