The results from the primary for the New Jersey special election came in and there were no surprises. Cory Booker won the Democratic nomination handily with 59% while his closest rival had 20%. Republican Steve Lonegan beat his single opponent Alieta Eck 79% to 21%.
The Booker vs. Lonegan election will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 16. Two months is a long time in politics, but currently Booker is leading comfortably in all the polls that have asked about this particular match-up.
The New York City mayoral race is much more up in the air. The Democratic primary polls taken this month by Siena and Quinnipiac don't agree on much except the fall of Anthony Weiner from the top tier of candidates.
The rules of the primary state that if a single candidate gets more than 40% of the vote, he or she is declared the winner. Otherwise the top two candidates are in a run-off. Here are the results for the top three candidates in the most recent polls.
Siena (8/2 to 8/7)
Quinn 25%
DiBlasio 14%
Thompson 16%
Quinnipiac (8/7 to 8/12)
DiBlasio 30%
Quinn 24%
Thompson 22%
My Confidence of Victory method does have ways of turning each of these sets of numbers into probabilities of victory for all three of these candidates, and as you might expect the Siena numbers from earlier in the month would make Quinn the prohibitive favorite while the Quinnipiac number would hand the big favorite role to DiBlasio.
Quinn has been the favorite for several months, never polling less than second. Similar to the 2012 Republican presidential primary, there is a remarkable amount of what I call "churn" in the numbers. If I stretched the analogy a little farther (perhaps too far, I can't be sure), this would put Christine Quinn, the openly gay speaker of the New York City Council in the role of Romney, while Weiner and DiBlasio, the New York City public advocate and considered the most liberal candidate, in the roles of the many Not Romneys that the Republican field had to offer.
The last five elections for mayor have been won by a Republican (Giuliani) and a former Republican turned Independent (Bloomberg), but the current assumption is that the star power is gone from the Republican ranks currently and the Democratic primary winner will move to Gracie Mansion.
I've read analyses by Harry Enten and Nate Silver, both of whom are very keen on historical track records. Maybe it's because I'm older than either of them or I've just seen so many predictions done on flimsy data turn out so badly, but I'm not convinced the historical record is the right thing to look at. An issue like "stop and frisk" has a strong chance to be a game changer, and that would work to DiBlasio's advantage.
Enten believes it's all about ethnic politics, which gives Thompson,who is black, an edge over DiBlasio. Silver thinks Quinn's position as front runner for most of the year gives her the inside track. I claim no expertise about New York politics, but I believe more strongly in event driven elections being the correct modern model and that historical data is often so much balloon juice.
I'll post again when there is new data.
I will keep track of these races through the primary on September 10, the likely run-off on October 1 and the general election on November 5.
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