A great bar discussion

No, there was no "election fraud" in Jersey

There is no greater conglomeration of potential voters than the hoi polloi sitting in bars on Saturday afternoons. And if you want to know what America really thinks, ask anyone sitting on a bar stool after two beers.

Five days after the 2021 election, I had visited my father’s gravesite in Gloucester County, New Jersey and went to dive bar on the way home.

And with half my Yuengling draft down, a guy with an old Giants jersey said out loud to no one in particular.

“Well, the Democrats stole another one.”

I could not resist, “Stole what?”

“Governor’s race. Ciattarelli won.”

“Not according to the counted ballots. How do you figure he won?”

“They stole it.”

“Again, how? Four of the five states Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020, he won with mere with pluralities. It’s not hard to beat someone who doesn’t get over the 50% mark. There’s a baseline of performance to show how Trump lost. What’s Ciattrelli’s evidence? Does he have a baseline to show he should have won? ”

“Baseline? What the f—k are you talking about?”

“Remember Jim Florio? Ran for Governor in 1989 and won but lost reelection. Do you know what his reelection percentage was, even after all the blowback was to his tax proposals?”

“Uhhh….”

“Fort-eight point three percent. Christine Todd Whitman only beat Florio by one point in ‘93. And Jim McGreevy got 45.8% when he ran against her in ‘97 and she was popular. When Christie won against Corzine in 2009, Corzine got nearly 45% and a third party environmentalist candidate got almost 6%.”

“So what. How do you know this s—t?”

“Sorry, the name’s Kevin. Professional Political Scientist. Going back 40 years, not a single Republican governor has won election with over 50% and the margins of victory have always been thin. The biggest win for the GOP in electing governors was Chris Christie in 2005 and the only reason margin was 3.6% was that the Daggett’s Independent candidacy pulled Democratic votes from Corzine.”

“But Murphy is too liberal and the news said no Democrat had gotten reelected in New Jersey since the 70s”

“It true about Murphy being the first reelected Democratic Governor since Brendan Byrne. But that’s because Jerseys is moderate politically and one of the wealthiest per capita and by median family income. Taxes are a huge Republican foil in political campaigns.”

“Now it sounds like you’re making my case.”

“No, not at all. Look get some real evidence of election fraud and we’ll talk, but the performance baseline is there to disprove the likelihood of fraud. New Jersey’s elected 4 Democratic governors in the past 40 years. And they’ve all won big then saw a drop off in support in reelection races. Florio won huge in ‘89, McGreevy won big in 2001, and Corzine won big in 2005. Corzine and Florio ran for reelection and came close to pulling it off. And taxes were a factor in both their losses. That’s what Ciattarelli was depending on, but he forgot two things.”

“What’d he forget?”

“New Jersey’s a moderate state. Kean, Whitman, and Christie ran as Republicans, not as conservatives. I didn’t think Jack Ciattarelli was going be overly conservative, but running as a conservative wasn’t going to help him with moderates. And his involvement with ‘Stop the Steal’ aligned him with Donald Trump. There’s a reason why 9 of New Jersey’s 11 Representatives in Congress are Democrats. Trumpism is not popular.”

“I still think they stole it. “

“Well the polling was Murphy winning by 4-8 points in October and the only reason it was close was it was the lowest turnout for a New Jersey gubernatorial race. Hey, maybe if you had an exit poll showing Ciattarelli was leading during voting….”

“What did the exit polls show?”

“There weren’t any…like I said, you don’t have a baseline to stand on. Bartender, another beer, please.”