Bush Wins New Jersey Presidential Primary
With the Republican and Democratic party nominations already decided, the New Jersey presidential primary which occurs in June is usually overlooked.
Al Gore carried New Jersey by 16%, his biggest margin in 2000, so political pundits routinely put New Jersey in Kerry's column in spite of polls showing the Democrat ahead by only 3 points, 46% to 43%; not only within the margin of error, but clearly still in play depending on how the undecided voters break.
In the June 8 primary Bush received 211,218 votes to Kerry's 191,816. When George Ballard's 2,758 votes, Dennis Kucinich's 9,074 and Lyndon LaRouche's 4,528 are added to Kerry's total; the whole Democratic turnout of 208,176 still trails Bush's total by 3,042 votes.
Even worse for the Democrats is the fact that Republicans outnumber Democrats in New Jersey by over 250,000 voters. Of course, like in many states, independent voters exceed the combined total of Republicans and Democrats by over half a million. That's a good reason to restrict the presidential debate to only two candidates, don't you think?