NJ-Fairleigh Dickinson: Menendez +4, many undecided

[Senator Incitatus]

Polls that don't properly push undecideds is a waste of the pollsters time and everybody else's.

FDU is a bizarre pollster. They got the final result within MoE in three of the last four governors' races (they had Corzine +2 in '09).

But they consistently get Senate races wrong (in both directions) because they don't push undecideds. (e.g. Booker +28 in '13) And they don't typically poll past June. I don't expect we'll see another poll from them.

I'd say it's junk if you're looking at the horserace, since undecideds probably stretch this margin way out. But if we're being generous, it could be looked at as a measure of core support and confirmation that Menendez lacks a base. I don't think undecideds will be breaking his way like they did post-Sandy, either.

Very good asset for fundraising, though.

[Senator Incitatus]

It is unfortunate that polarization has made it such that a genuinely bad incumbent can get by and win a comfortable reelection victory. If New Jersey were still more favorable to the Republicans at the federal level, than this race would probably be in the competitive tier of 2018, given Menendez's corruption scandals.

It's not just that, the Republican candidate Hugin is awful.

I see. So the voters there basically have to choose the lesser of two evils, as is so often the case.

You would have to be a complete hack to consider Hugin an "awful" candidate by any stretch. Definitely the best Republican to run for Senate since at least Kean '06, if not much earlier.

He's a throwback to Dawkins '88. He'll appeal strongly to the demographics that historically carried Republicans to victories here and if effective should make strong inroads with As-Am voters in Middlesex/Mercer/Somerset.

He has a major weakness in that he's a pharma exec for a company that sells cancer medication at a high price, but pharma is also the major industry in the state and Menendez (like Booker and every other Democrat in NJ) has a voting record that is firmly pro-pharma.¹ Let's also remember that Menendez's corruption scandal was for helping a friend who defrauded Medicaid, so "healthcare is expensive" is probably not the effective line of attack it could be.

Unmitigated positives include: working class, Union City background; Princeton and Darden Business grad; long military service; purportedly independent-minded²; $7.5M in self-funding already; +9 net approvals with low ID<sup>3

1</sup> Not to mention any Democratic hack claiming this makes Hugin an awful candidate would have to consider Manchin equally awful, or worse, since he has an actual voting record to corroborate accusations of price gouging.

² Although he served as Trump's NJ finance chair, he is critical of Trump on issues affecting NJ and has taken a moderate tone, saying "I don't care who you voted for." Presumably, he won't launch partisan attacks on Menendez because he will never have to do so.

³presumably this sample is mostly Republican primary voters, among whom his name ID is highest

[Senator Incitatus]

I see. Thank you for providing this background information about Hugin. Admittedly, I know little about New Jersey politics, and have been going off news reports that I have seen here and elsewhere. I fell into the trap of believing that some candidate is bad, just because the person from their opposing party says so. If polarization were not so bad, and if this environment were a more neutral one, Menendez, I would imagine, would be in some danger. But because of how things are playing this year, and how things are in New Jersey, he is unfortunately going to win by double digits.

That is why I would like for a return to the older days, with more Democrats from Southern and Western states, and more Republicans from the Northeast.

That's ok. Don't just take my word for it, but I did want to add some perspective to your understanding.

I'm very much in the same place on Menendez. I was very hopeful that he would get a credible primary challenger like Asm. Wisniewski (Bernie '16 NJ campaign chair) or Steve Fulop (mayor of Jersey City) and was willing to change party affiliation to vote in that primary. But no such candidate announced.

The silver lining is that Fulop and Sen. Brian Stack are launching a challenge for the leadership of the  Hudson County Democratic Organization, which is the heart of the Menendez machine. But failure is a possibility, and even if Stack becomes leader, I'm cynically resigned to assuming he would be just a younger, equally corrupt figure.