NJ-Stockton: Menendez +2

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A few brighter spots for Menendez, the poll is only 8% black, but NJ electorate is around 14% black, and asians are less than 1% of the poll, but are over 8% of NJ and a little under that in the electorate. Menendez is probably leading by 5-6.

Stockton obviously has problems that make this poll favor Hugin, but I wouldn't assume Asian voters are going to go for Menendez in any big way. I think he'll be under 60% with them.

The real problem is the undersampling of Hispanics and black voters.

A few brighter spots for Menendez, the poll is only 8% black, but NJ electorate is around 14% black, and asians are less than 1% of the poll, but are over 8% of NJ and a little under that in the electorate. Menendez is probably leading by 5-6.

According to exit polls from past off-year elections in NJ, African-American's have been about 10% of the electorate (looking back at 2006 and 2017), and not 14% which is the presidential level. Same thing for Asians, they have consistently been about 3% of the electorate in past off-year elections, so this poll isn't that far off. But who knows, that could all change.

2017 had record low turnout which 2018 wont have and 2006 was 12 years ago and the state has gotten a lot less white since then.

It has also gotten a lot less non-Hispanic black since 2006. Population growth in NJ is almost entirely driven by Hispanic and especially (South) Asian populations.

[Senator Incitatus]

The poll specifically says 4% Hispanic and 8% black pre-weighting. Did they only weight by likelihood or did they also presumably weight by race?

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Beyond candidate quality, it's striking how terrible the Menendez campaign is as an operation. This is probably partly a product of Menendez's own flaws, though. What credible operative would want to work for this scumbag?

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The poll specifically says 4% Hispanic and 8% black pre-weighting. Did they only weight by likelihood or did they also presumably weight by race?

I'm not sure how accurately you can weigh 24 people tbh. 

Not very. Wish we had actual crosstabs so we could see if there were any counter-intuitive results. I don't really have a problem with it if they found Menendez gets 90% of the black vote and 75% of the Hispanic vote or something similar, and then weighted that. It might not be a accurate picture of the race, but at least we'd know it's not an overestimate of Hugin's real support.

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I wish Rush Holt had run, he would win easily and would be a really good Senator.