NYT: Blue State New Jersey May Be Trying on Shades of Purple (dead heat?)

[DeepModem Mom]

New Jersey, a Blue State, May Be Trying on Shades of Purple
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

Published: September 26, 2004


TRENTON, Sept. 25 - To those who view this year's presidential race as a battle between politically polarized red and blue states, New Jersey has usually been viewed as so unquestionably Democratic that it could be colored somewhere between midnight and navy.

But after trailing Mr. Kerry by 10 points in New Jersey as recently as late August, President Bush has sustained a bounce he received after the Republican convention, and three surveys released within the past 10 days suggest that the race for New Jersey's 15 electoral votes is now a statistical dead heat....

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As Republican strategists predicted earlier this year, the message of their convention in Manhattan, which portrayed Mr. Bush as an unflinching avenger in the war on terror, seems to have resonated in New Jersey, which lost 700 people in the 9/11 attacks, and where the gaping absence on the New York skyline is a backdrop of daily life. The state's Democrats, meanwhile, have spent the past two months buried in an avalanche of bad news: sordid corruption investigations involving Gov. James E. McGreevey's aides and contributors and Mr. McGreevey's resignation amid a sex scandal.

Beyond those local factors, Mr. Kerry's struggles in New Jersey seem to mirror national trends, in which he has lost ground among swing voters, independents and soft Democrats after the Republican National Convention. So while a majority of New Jerseyans disapprove of Mr. Bush's performance as president - and oppose his stands on issues from the war in Iraq and health care to the economy and gay marriage - Republicans succeeded in focusing the race on Mr. Bush's strongest issue: the war on terror....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/nyregion/26jersey.html