In the Right

In the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute survey, the number of likely GOP primary voters who say they don't know enough about Christie to form an opinion is at 37 percent.

The number of likely GOP primary voters who say they don't know enough about Lonegan to form an opinion is even higher, 51 percent.

When 37 percent of the electorate doesn't know enough to form an opinion about the front-runner, and more than half the electorate doesn't know enough to form an opinion about his challenger, well, pollsters get a bit squeamish, and start adding qualifiers to their findings.

This is when they start referring to New Jersey's "volatile electorate."

So the ballot test question on the May 20 Quinnipiac University survey -- in which Christie leads Lonegan by 56 percent to 33 percent -- is still, even at this late date, not necessarily a valid predictor of the outcome.

Possibly a better predictor would be the ballot test among that smaller cell of likely GOP primary voters who have enough information to have formed an opinion about both leading candidates.

As we've noted before, pollsters don't usually publish such specific information -- the number of voters who say they've formed an opinion of both candidates is so small that the margin of error in extrapolating out from that number becomes so large that it makes pollsters even more uncomfortable. In this case, the margin of error for the small cell of likely GOP primary voters who have formed an opinion of both candidates is plus or minus 5.7 percent.

But as readers of this blog know, we follow the information wherever it leads us -- properly caveated, as Al Haig would say.

So I once again got in touch with Clay Richards, who directs the poll for Quinnipiac University, and asked for that particular information in this latest survey.

The good news for Christie is: that ballot test among the smaller cell of likely GOP voters who have formed an opinion has changed significantly over the last month -- from a 54 percent to 41 percent Lonegan lead on the April 22 survey into a 52 p;ercent to 44 percent Christie lead in the new survey.

So among that smaller subsample of likely GOP primary voters who have formed an opinion of both candidates, Christie has gone from trailing by 13 percent to leading by 8 percent.

The bad news for Christie: there's still a large group of voters who don't know enough about either candidate to form an opinion.

And that large group of voters still represents an opportunity for Lonegan.

Christie hopes the next week goes by relatively uneventfully.

Lonegan, on the other hand, hopes Christie provides him an opening tonight -- perhaps an opening in which Lonegan can call Christie to account for his campaign's attacks on Lonegan's flat tax plan.

The debate will be aired tonight, beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern time, on NJ 101.5 -- the state's largest-audience radio station, broadcast out of central New Jersey with a repeater station expanding its reach throughout South Jersey -- and the debate format will allow for a more free-flowing discussion among the gubernatorial candidates.

You can tune in here to listen live.