06/04/2002 Archived Entry: "Primary Results, New Jersey"

New Jersey results

US Senate GOP Primary
Even the staunchest Democrats will tell you they are embarrassed by Toricelli's actions with campaign contributions, but not to the extent that they are willing to put up with Lott & Nickles running the country into the rightwing ground, by having the Torch lose this year. Even so, let's not forget that McCain went through a similar situation, and came out of it reformed and better for it. Is this possible for Toricelli too? He says so, Torricelli tells GOP opponents: Bring it on. He's got more than $4M on hand, but Forrester spent well over $5M to win. Forrester is probably not as tough a candidate as Allen would have been for Toricelli, or as weak as Matheussen, but he'll spend at Corzine-levels, and that alone will make this semi-competitive at least. Head to head in a primary run-off, Allen might have defeated Forrester, but Matheussen split S.Jersey voters with her. Overall, a pretty slack showing for GOP voters in NJ, Forrester is going to need to find about 1 million more voters to have a chance against beating Torricelli in November:

6,245 of 6,260 precincts - 99% GOP Senate:

x-Douglas R. Forrester 95,275 - 44 percent
Diane Allen 79,124 - 37 percent
John J. Matheussen 40,111 - 19 percent

Given the money he spent, Forrester didn't win by as much as he should have, spending well over 10x what Allen and Matheussen spent, the latter who did much better than I expected in my predictions:

GOP Senate:
Forrester 54
Allen 33
Mattheusen 10
Other 3

GOP U.S. House District 5
I've already written extensively on the prospect of this race, 05/19/2002 Archived Entry: "NJ 5th US House race, Sumers vs Garrett". With Sumers now calling herself a Roukema-Republican, and Roukema (who backed 3rd place Cardinale) saying that if the GOP nominated Garrett a Democrat would win the seat, two of the pieces needed for a Sumers victory are in place. Just a few more to go here for a Democratic takeover.

430 of 430 precincts - 100%::

x-Scott Garrett 15,867 - 45 percent
David C. Russo 9,124 - 26 percent
Gerald Cardinale 8,923 - 25 percent

As for my predictions on this race from yesterday, I hit the sweet spot on this one!

GOP CD 5:
Garrett 45
Cardinale 25
Russo 25
Other 5

Replies: 1 Comment

No coattails in this state. No governor's race here and Torch will not have any coattails. However, New Jersey is trending Democratic and Torch should win against a right-winger. The Garrett-Summers race is going to be interesting.

Posted by G.C. Raj @ 06/05/2002 08:07 AM PST