Obama-McCain (left) and Christie-Corzine (right)

In the presidential election, New Jersey turned out 3,828,000 votes which broke 57-42% for Obama. On Tuesday, about 2,300,000 votes were cast–about two thirds of last year’s turnout, an expectable drop. Check here for the 2008 election interactive map, and here for the 2009 election interactive map.

Let’s take a look at the turnouts of Morris and Essex Counties in these two races, which I feel illustrates the difference between these two elections.

Morris is the biggest voting base of Republicans in the state, and Essex (where Seton Hall and Newark are located) is a typical urban, Democrat stronghold.

In the 2008 presidential election, Obama carried Essex handily with 240,000 votes (76% of the county). Meanwhile, McCain had a rather poor cut of the Morris County vote with 132,000 (54% of the county).

Now, let’s look at the Governor’s race. While Corzine obviously did well in Essex (67% of the county), the turnout was terrible compared to the previous year–120,000 Corzine votes, half of what Obama garnered a year before. In the meantime, Christie beat Corzine 2-to-1 in Morris (60% to 31%), bringing in three quarters of McCain’s turnout. Similar results in Monmouth County, where McCain slipped by with 51-48%. As Kim Guadagno’s home turf, she and Christie once again beat Corzine 2-to-1 and matched McCain’s numbers by around 80 percent.

Essentially, this illustrates the differing levels each candidate’s bases were motivated this election. Democrats were forced to work with an unpopular incumbent who had nowhere near the “star power” of Obama, no matter how hard he tried. Meanwhile, Christie was able to win big in conservative areas and pull in large areas of “blue suburbs,” like Middlesex County.

Furthermore, wherever Christie did the strongest (Morris, Sussex, Warren)–so did Daggett, the independent candidate. While I’m sure it wasn’t a 1:1 ratio, for the most part, Daggett pulled votes away from Christie. The Democrats knew this and shamelessly tried to exploit it. Considering this, without Daggett in the race, I believe that Christie would have easily broken 50% of the vote.