The polls have been open for several hours now, and the whole thing has been fairly controversial, from the date of the election to Corey Booker’s text messages to a stripper to Steve Lonegan’s Tea Party ideas and background as a shill for the Koch brothers. Cite.
Personally, I’d prefer that near-superhero Mayor Booker win, but I don’t live anywhere near NJ so I have no idea what things on the ground are really like there. Any thoughts on this election?
Booker’s going to win easily. The big story over the last couple of days was that his lead was down to “only” 10 or 12 percentage points.
Classic media play - making a slam dunk look in question to drive interest and sell advertising.
I love the New Jersey split ticket - Democrats voting for Christie and Republicans voting for Booker (yes, I know the elections are a few weeks apart).
ETA - I knew Cory in college. Stand-up classy guy. Though I disagree with him on some issues, he gets money from me every time he runs.
That’s not how advertising works. But yes, the race was seen as a rout the entire time, so there was a little to-do about Booker stumbling to a lead of only 10 or 12 or 14 percent. Even Lonegan’s people didn’t seem to believe he was really in it. He spent part of this week pushing a made-up Daily Caller story about Booker not really living in Newark. 
Booker is going to win, and he should, he’s one of the few good guys in politics. I live in a heavily pro Lonegan area (because my town is very wealthy, and also the worst) so I made double sure to vote today, but I don’t think it will matter, Booker has this. Lonegan’s aide coming out and calling Booker gay was the final nail in the coffin.
I have been amazed by the level of vitriol in Lonegan’s ads recently. He comes as close to outright lying about his opponent as I have ever seen, but maybe I have just been sheltered from nasty local politics most of my life.
More interest = more readership = more advertising revenue.
The process isn’t that fast or direct, though. They’re not going to get a huge bump in traffic by reporting that Booker’s huge lead is down to 12 points a couple of days before the election- that’s not going to put a whole lot of people on the edge of their seats. The issue here is a bias toward drama, not an attempt to get more revenue.
Why? Would it not have been cheaper to schedule them for the same day?
Absolutely. But this way increases the relative turnout for Lonegan today, making it an enticing option for Christie, who thereby proves his party-before-people credentials.
He’s such a fascinating contrast to Booker’s image. It’s almost as if Lonegan wanted to uphold New Jersey’s reputation as a dark pit of malignancy.
I can’t find an updated list, but Mother Jones ran a storyway back in August with some of the more repugnant quotes, including:
None of those really involve Booker. Anyone know of a list of the gay innuendos and other slurs?
And Booker’s still only 10 points up on that jackwagon?
Here are the latest polls listed by RCP. 10 points is the closest.
I don’t get it. How does having the election today mean more relative turnout for Lonegan? And why does that matter to Christie? He must know Lonegan can’t possibly win anyway.
Traditional higher turnout for Republicans in special elections.
I thought the theory was the special election takes Booker off the ballot next month, which helps Christie because it gives Democrats one less reason to turn out. A lot of people are excited about Booker; not as many are into Barbara Buono.
That’s not what it’s about.
Christie has his eye on the 2016 elections, and he wants to win by as big of a margin as possible. So he didn’t want to be running on the same ticket as Booker, who was expected to win in a landslide and whose coattails might shave a few points off his margin.
Very selfish and hypocritical move by Christie, who spent millions in taxpayer money over this, while cutting spending is his big theme.
ETA: Which is in addition to the fact that Christie’s coattails might have helped Lonegan. (Although the race was not initially expected to be this close).
Everybody’s called the race for Booker. With a little more than half the votes in, he’s winning 55%-44%.
I think you have, every single candidate goes right to outright lying from the very start. Every last one of them. One that only came close to lying but be a damn saint.
I think at one point Lonegan’s people tried to suggest Booker was gay because he didn’t want to motorboat some stripper.
I’ll probably regret asking this, but, “motorboat”? 