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Barack Obama wants to help Jon Corzine win in New Jersey — so he’s coming back one more time. But will it, in fact, help?

Data from a Monmouth University/Gannett poll, conducted Oct. 15-18, suggests it might not — depending on how you look at it, and who’s doing the looking.

According to the survey, President Obama’s job approval rating in New Jersey is 53 percent approve, 39 percent disapprove. That’s a net plus-14 on the job approval rating. On the face of it, it looks like it would be a good move to bring him in.

But a closer look at the data reveals that among the few undecided voters remaining in the race, his job approval ratings are a bit lower — 44 percent approve, 35 percent disapprove. So that net plus-14 among all likely voters is only a net plus-9 among undecided voters. And his approval rating among those key undecided voters is less than 50 percent. So it looks like it’s still a good idea, but a bit less of one.

With eight days to go in the New Jersey governor's race, this new SurveyUSA poll and this new Eagleton-Rutgers survey make it clear -- independent candidate Chris Daggett, at 19 and 20 percent on the ballot test and climbing, respectively, has moved beyond "spoiler" status into bona fide potential governor territory.

To put Daggett's 19 and 20 percent in context, when former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura pulled off his upset victory in the 1998 governor's race, he polled at 21 percent on Oct. 18 -- and he polled at 27 percent in the last pre-election survey, before closing with 37 percent of the vote on Election Day.

So the question now is, what would it take for Daggett to close the deal and pull off the upset?

Why in the world is Barack Obama going to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds in Hampton Roads next Tuesday?

After reading this bombshell in this morning’s Washington Post — “Deeds ignored advice, White House says” — any words of support from Obama’s mouth to the assembled masses will ring hollow.

The post-mortem blame game is always the worst part of any losing campaign.

And, speaking from experience, I can say with confidence that most practitioners of the fine arts of the campaign would rather lose by a lot than lose by a little — when you get swamped, you realize there was very little you could have done differently to change the outcome, and you can mentally shake off the loss and look forward to the next campaign as soon as you recover from your hangover.

In New Jersey, independent gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett is up with his first television ad of the general election campaign — a humorous spot that uses two look-alikes to make its point about Republican challenger Chris Christie and Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine.

The ad was produced by Bill Hillsman of North Woods Advertising, who famously produced ads for Jesse Ventura’s successful 1998 independent campaign for Minnesota governor and Paul Wellstone’s campaigns for U.S. Senate.

There’s just one question — did Daggett pay Hillsman full price for creative on the spot? Because it sure looks an awful lot like another spot, seen here on YouTube.

Hmmm.

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Two things of import happened today in New Jersey's contest to choose its next governor:

First, a new survey by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute shows GOP challenger Chris Christie has widened his lead over incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine from six points to 10 in the last three weeks.

Second, the Christie campaign rolled out the biggest endorsement gun in its arsenal -- former Governor Tom Kean, who ruled New Jersey from 1982-1990, and who is still revered as an old school gentleman in a state where at least some voters still think manners matter.

Chris Christie, the Republican nominee in this year's race for governor of New Jersey, apparently has determined not to make property taxes a central issue of the campaign against Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine and instead to focus on corruption. And this is proving to be a costly decision.

"That decision could be the one that ends up sinking [Christie's] campaign," says Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University's polling institute.

I say "apparently" in describing Christie's strategy because, while it is beyond dispute that his campaign has failed to make property taxes a central issue of its platform so far, it is not necessarily true that the campaign has no plans to make tax reform the focal point of the fall campaign.

It is at least possible that the Christie campaign has made a decision to hunker down through the hot summer months, when only a relatively small segment of New Jersey voters are paying attention, and instead save its ammunition for a concentrated burst in the final weeks of the campaign.

Will someone please pass this message to the people running the Republican Governors Association: "Please, sirs, stop running the inane negative spots attacking Jon Corzine, and instead start running positive spots building up Chris Christie?! Or, at the very least, if you insist on running attack spots, could you at least run attack spots that might actually have a chance of working?"

I've written before about the strategic imperative facing Republicans who want to win this year's contest for New Jersey governor: To do so, they first must win the war over GOP nominee Chris Christie's image.

Virtually every likely voter in the state knows and has an opinion about Corzine, the incumbent Democrat -- according to the latest survey from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, for example, only 6 percent of the survey sample said they hadn't heard enough about Corzine to form an opinion.

Well, the new survey from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute is out, and the race for New Jersey governor is tightening: GOP challenger Chris Christie clings to a 6-point, 46 percent to 40 percent lead over incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, with independent candidate Chris Daggett drawing 7 percent of the vote.

That's a significant movement from the July 14 survey, which showed Christie leading Corzine by 47 percent to 38 percent, with Daggett at 8 percent.

"Significant movement" when it's just a 3 point difference? Yes, it's significant, when 3 points is the difference between a 9-point lead and a 6-point lead. In that difference, the 3 points represents a 33 percent cut -- so Corzine's team can say, "We've cut Christie's lead by a third."

Plus, in a poll where the margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percent, that 6-point lead begins to look even smaller -- because it might just be a 3-point lead, and there's still 12 weeks to go.