In the Right

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.

For the past several days, the Christie campaign has been responding to the survey results -- first dismissing them, then launching an attack against Lonegan, then pulling back and saying they were going to re-focus their attacks on Corzine.

Meanwhile, Team Christie overlooked far more threatening data points in the Quinnipiac survey.

So did just about everybody else.

Buried at the bottom of the survey -- questions number 24, 25, and 26 out of a 26-question survey -- were the following:

"24. Did you happen to know that Christopher Christie is the federal prosecutor responsible for putting more than a hundred New Jersey politicians out of office or in jail or weren't you aware of that?

"25. Does that make you more likely to vote for Christopher Christie for governor over Jon Corzine, less likely to vote for Christopher Christie over Jon Corzine, or doesn't it make a difference?

"26. Do you think being a federal prosecutor has given Christopher Christie enough experience to be governor of New Jersey?"

According to the survey, fewer than half of those likely voters polled were aware that Chris Christie is the former U.S. Attorney responsible for putting more than 100 crooked New Jersey pols in jail or out of office.

Just 44 percent were aware, actually -- meaning 56 percent were not.

That 44 percent number is exactly the same as the 44 percent who said they were aware of it six weeks ago, the last time Quinnipiac surveyed voters in New Jersey.

In other words, the dial hasn't moved an inch -- whatever the Christie campaign has been doing over the past six weeks to communicate to voters about its candidate's biography has been ineffective.

Worse, only 38 percent said knowing he put crooked pols in jail would make them more likely to vote for Christie for governor -- meaning 62 percent would be unmoved, at best, or less likely, at worst.

And just 46 percent of voters said they think Christie's experience as a federal prosecutor has given him the requisite experience to be governor -- meaning that more than half look at his experience and say, "meh."

In other words, the Christie campaign has been ineffectively communicating data points that would be ineffective in moving numbers even if they were being communicated effectively.

Why?

Because voters in New Jersey are inured to corruption.

They accept it like their morning coffee.

Running as a corruption-busting former U.S. Attorney just isn't likely to win a general election in New Jersey in 2009.

In 2005, Doug Forrester ran a gubernatorial campaign against Jon Corzine in which Forrester's strategy appeared to be simple: Offer up some vague compromise with Corzine on all the contentious issues, so they would be taken off the table as points of differentiation; that way, the campaign discourse could focus on the one issue Forrester wanted to talk about -- corruption.

That campaign failed miserably. Forrester lost to Corzine by 10 points and 240,000 votes.

Corzine's weakness is not corruption -- it is the economy.

New Jersey's economy is in the dumps, and Corzine is getting a large share of the blame from voters.

Worse, Corzine's personal biography -- wealthy former CEO of Goldman-Sachs -- no longer is the plus to him it was in earlier runs for office.

A background as a Wall Street fat cat actually might be a negative these days, even in New Jersey.

A hard economic message focused on cutting taxes and cutting wasteful government spending could work in the current New Jersey environment.

But only if the Christie campaign recognizes it, and moves to take advantage of the opening.

Oh, one more thing -- the GOP primary really is a single-digit race.

I know this, because I followed up with Quinnipiac University Polling Institute on their survey release, and asked for data that had not been included.

I wanted to know what was the ballot test among likely GOP voters who had enough information to form an opinion of both Christie and Lonegan.

And in this smaller subsample -- remember, even among likely GOP voters, 61 percent said they didn't have enough information about Lonegan to have formed an opinion -- Lonegan actually is leading Christie by 54-41.

Before anyone goes off half-cocked, screaming "The Q Poll says Lonegan's leading!" remember, on a sample this small, the margin of error is huge -- in this case, 6.8 percent.

That means Lonegan's 54 could be just 47, and Christie's 41 could be 48. So Christie could be leading among this small subsample of a subsample.

But it could just as easily go the other way -- Lonegan's 54 actually could be 61, while Christie's 41 could be 34.

That's why reputable pollsters like to survey much larger samples, and hesitate to release numbers from survey cells this small.

So take that 54-41 number with a huge grain of salt. Think Lot's wife.

But even with the caveats, the numbers make the point: Among voters who have heard enough about both Christie and Lonegan to form an opinion of both, they're making a choice.

And that means Lonegan's message -- all taxes and spending, all the time -- is a more powerful message than is Christie's.