Christie Beats Corzine in New Jersey

Republican Chris Christie won the New Jersey governor's race, overcoming the huge edge incumbent Jon Corzine had in campaign funds and multiple visits by President Obama to rally Democrats to Corzine's side.

Major news organizations called the race for the 47-year-old former federal prosecutor a little more than two hours after the polls closed, based on their reading of the exit polls. With 98 percent of precincts reporting by late Tuesday, Christie was leading in the actual vote, 49 percent to 45 percent.

Corzine called Christie shortly before 11 p.m. to concede and promised to ensure a smooth transition, the Associated Press said.

Republicans had not won a statewide race in New Jersey in a dozen years, and while national Democrats tried to deflect efforts to portray the race as a referendum on their policies, Obama's heavy involvement here may have raised the perception stakes as well as a red flag for other elected Democrats about the mood of voters.

Independent Chris Daggett, who looked for a while like a wild card in the race, drew 6 percent of the vote, below where most polls had him during October. Nearly all the surveys put him somewhere between 7 percent and 13 percent, although one put him at 20 percent.

Corzine, 62, who plowed his personal money into his successful 53 percent-44 percent victory in 2005, outspent both Christie and Daggett combined. As of a week ago, Corzine had poured $23.6 million of his own money into the campaign since winning a Democratic primary, according to documents released by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. Christie had $11.4 million, a combination of public financing and private contributions. Daggett, who also took public funding, had a total of $1.3 million.

At the beginning of September, Christie led the increasingly unpopular Corzine by 10 points in a race that appeared to be his to lose as Corzine found himself sinking under the weight of the state's economy and budget problems.

But the contest tightened through October, especially as the numbers fluctuated for Daggett, a former regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who had worked in the gubernatorial campaigns of Republican candidates.

On the much-discussed question about how much the result would reflect on Obama, the exit polls said 60 percent of voters in New Jersey said the president was not a factor in their decision. Those saying Obama was a factor split on whether theirs was a vote for or against him, with 19 percent saying it was in support and 20 percent saying it was in opposition to him.

Among Corzine voters, 38 percent said showing support for Obama was one reason they voted for him, while 39 percent of Christie voters said a factor was the chance to express opposition to Obama.

Exit polls also showed Christie leading Corzine 58 percent to 33 percent among independents, who make up 27 percent of the electorate.

In this election year, there was a big jump in the number of voters who cast ballots by mail. Roughly 184,000 people applied for mail ballots as of yesterday and 123,500 ballots had been received, compared to 91,726 absentee ballots in 2005. All of those ballots are not still outstanding because they were being counted as they came in before Election Day, according to the New Jersey secretary of state's office.

The top issues for voters have been property taxes and taxes in general, issues on which polls showed voters generally trust Christie more.

The last poll on the race, from Fairleigh Dickinson University on Monday, found 68 percent saying the country was heading in the right direction and just 34 percent saying that about New Jersey -- not surprising in a state with a 9.7 percent unemployment rate and a looming $8 billion state budget deficit.

The exit polls confirmed how much the economy was on the minds of voters. Thirty-one percent said the economy was the most important issue, 26 percent cited property taxes, 20 percent pointed to corruption and 18 percent named health care.

The outcome of the election turned, in part, on two factors: Corzine's inability to rouse the state's Democrats and independents, who flocked to the polls last year, energized by Obama's presidential campaign; and how much Daggett's candidacy tipped the ballot.

Corzine struggled throughout the campaign to capitalize on the Democrats' advantage in registered voters as well as party identification. Democrats lead in registration with 24 percent, with 18 percent for the Republicans and 58 percent unaffiliated with either party. But when unaffiliated voters are asked which way they lean, 40 percent identify with the Democrats and 26 percent with the Republicans with 33 percent remaining independent, according to the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

But Corzine was not igniting anywhere near the same enthusiasm as Obama did last year when more than 440,000 new voters went to the polls.

Several polls indicated that many Democrats this year were sitting on the sidelines up to the last days of the campaign and that Corzine was underperforming among key Democratic constituencies such as blacks and Hispanics. He tried to rectify that by attaching himself to Obama, who is far more popular in the state, and rebranding his re-election drive as "Yes We Can 2.0."

For his part, Christie, a former U.S. attorney, had been criticized by some for losing an early lead with an ineffectual campaign, although Corzine's well-funded run of television ads and New Jersey's tradition of Democrats coming back home as Election Day nears may have also contributed to that. The number of voters who saw him favorably or unfavorably had bounced back-and-forth, sometimes tipping over to the positive side and sometimes to the negative. In nearly every poll, Corzine has been seen unfavorably by double-digit margins.