NJ-Quinnipiac: Menendez +7

[kyc0705]

Why didn't he lose in the primaries? Why do people continue to vote for such people in primaries... .

Because nobody with any infrastructure or name recognition ran against him. The New Jersey Democratic machine is almost comically strong. Still, it's telling that Menendez's one primary opponent managed to win 40% of the vote, despite being completely anonymous. In effect, many voters were willing to go for her purely as a protest vote (myself included).

[kyc0705]

Why didn't he lose in the primaries? Why do people continue to vote for such people in primaries... .

Because nobody with any infrastructure or name recognition ran against him. The New Jersey Democratic machine is almost comically strong. Still, it's telling that Menendez's one primary opponent managed to win 40% of the vote, despite being completely anonymous. In effect, many voters were willing to go for her purely as a protest vote (myself included).

What's surprising to me is not how strong the machine is, but that someone like Menendez was ultimately able to exercise control over it. The NJ Democrats place absurd value on loyalty. Competent machines would have rightly forced him off the ballot.

It probably just added up for them that it was worth the risk, in exchange for retaining that "loyalty" factor. That is, they felt that Menendez was too loyal to drop, and concluded that New Jersey is sufficiently inelastic for federal elections that he could pull through anyway (if by relatively low margins considering the national environment).