As this election year heats up, the race for New Jersey’s Governor begins to tighten as both campaigns begin to push their messages via press releases, speeches, and political endorsements. Meanwhile, the media throughout the state and nation are taking notice. News outlets are now focusing on New Jersey voters and the strategies of the two campaigns to better gauge this race to predict where New Jersey is headed. The outcome not only this race but also the race in Virginia could potentially send a warning sign to Democrats pre-2010.
Jon Corzine’s campaign website mainly focuses on the state of the economy, jobs, healthcare, education, and endorsements for the governor. Much of this focus is shown on the homepage as commercial ad attacks on Christie (most recently on mammograms and early childhood education) next to positive ads talking about Corzine’s successes on healthcare in the state. Chris Christie’s campaign website, on the other hand, focuses on his stance with law enforcement, teachers, and fire fighters. For his site’s overview of his policies, it displays an attack ad on Corzine and high property taxes and emphasizes “cutting taxes, controlling spending, and creating jobs”. The most recent set of the Chrisitie campaign’s press releases are all attacks on “Corzine taxes” declaring, “Everywhere we go… Jon Corzine’s property taxes follow.”
Many media outlets have been covering this election carefully, but how is the media reporting the candidate’s messages? One recent article in the Asbury Park Press challenged both major candidates on their lack of detail on the property tax issue. The article states that, “The topic is not addressed in their TV ads and given short shrift on their campaign web sites…[Daggett is the only] one of the three major candidates for governor that has offered a detailed plan to combat your highest-in-nation property taxes.”
An article on Politico.com entitled “Will Chris Christie be the Biggest Loser?” talked about a recent Corzine ad arguing that Christie was “throwing his weight around as district attorney” to get out of multiple traffic violations. The article goes on to focus on the ad’s visuals of the heavyset Christie getting out of his SUV in slow motion. This story even made its rounds on MSNBC’s Hardball and the New York Times as dirty negative politics coming from the Corzine campaign.
Unfortunately for both major party candidates, the media is reporting more and more that voters are being turned off by the negative ads coming from both campaigns. The New York Times reported, “[Corzine and Christie] appear to be turning off voters with nasty ads and personal attacks; Mr. Daggett is turning them on — or at least persuading them to give him a closer look.” Mr. Daggett has just won The Star-Ledger’s endorsement for his property tax plan.
With this growing trend within the media to focus on the seeming reluctance for detailed property tax initiatives, negative attacks coming from both Corzine and Chrisite, and the appeal of the independent Chris Daggett, how do these two campaigns use new media to push the messages they want out there? Corzine would like the focus to be on healthcare, his relationship with Barack Obama, the New Jersey Stimulus, and the shortfalls of his rival. Chrisite wants to focus on Corzine and his failures, cutting taxes, and stopping the Democratic State Senate from spending more.
Both the Corzine and Christie campaigns have turned to social networking websites to get their messages and ads out there. Twitter and Facebook users can follow both candidates and get links to videos, pictures, articles, or press releases that the campaigns want the voters to see. The campaigns have even implemented text-messaging systems, where people can subscribe to get text message alerts from the campaign on their cell phones. These include messages about registration deadlines, post-debate polls, and will provide them with a mass messaging system to alert voters to vote on Election Day. This has become a valuable strategy.
Pollster has showed in recent weeks since the debate that the race is continuing to tighten. It remains to be seen how effective Daggett will be in pulling votes from Corzine and Christie, but Corzine has nearly tied Christie in Pollster’s snapshot of polls at 40% to Christie’s 41.4% average. The trend shows a steady decline for Christie mainly due to his lacking performance in the debates and the effectiveness of negative attack ads coming from the Corzine campaign. Despite the media and voter’s rejection of negative attack ads, they appear to be effective for the Corzine campaign. Interestingly, Google Trends, Google’s search rating system, shows that in 2009 a search for “Jon Corzine” yielded a 3.2 search index less than “Chris Christie” at 3.9. This shows that more people are “googling” Chrisite.
Corzine’s ad campaign and political endorsements has helped him come back from a once certain death in the polls. The Christie campaign is now on the defensive, answering attack ads with attack ads and showing an inability to dominate the media frenzy. They have been even more unsuccessful in getting their message out to the public. The interesting trend to watch leading up to the election is the impact of Daggett, who is gaining the support of traditional media. The question is who will he hurt more?
