By all accounts, Christie is destroying Barbara Buono in New Jersey. Per Quinnipiac, the governor currently leads his opponent by around 35 points. Most surprising, however, is Christie’s apparently strong performance with African-American voters. Scott Conroy in RealClearPolitics reports that,
while just 9 percent of African-American voters cast their ballots for the Republican in 2009, he currently earns 36 percent of the black vote, according to the new poll.
Though the sample size of black voters polled by Quinnipiac was small, Christie has polled at or above 30 percent among African-Americans in several other recent surveys.
To put that standing in recent historical perspective, no Republican presidential, Senate, or gubernatorial candidate in the state Jersey has topped 17 percent of the African-American vote in more than two decades.
If Christie can break that 30-percent threshold in November, it will give him a powerful 2016 talking point with Republicans voters from New Hampshire to Nevada, who will be eager to nominate someone with a wide enough appeal to regain the White House after the GOP’s years in the political wilderness.
One of the reasons for this, Conroy suggests, is that Christie has actually bothered to try to win African-American votes:
Margaret El, an African-American woman in her 60s, was about to sit down for a slice at Pizza Center on Main Street when Christie burst through the doors with a small entourage in tow.
A registered Democrat who voted for President Obama twice, El served as a volunteer on Corzine’s 2009 campaign. Now, however, she is a Christie supporter.
“How many Republicans are you going to see walking up and down these streets like this?” she said. “He’s approachable. I really like that. And I think the people in Orange are really thrilled, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, that he’s here.”
The rest here.