Changing the Debate: Duopolist Prejudice and Independent Strategy

Following New Jersey's first gubernatorial debate of the campaign season, which took place last week, independent candidate Chris Daggett was considered by many to have soundly defeated his duopolist rivals, Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine and the Republican establishment's candidate Chris Christie. The positive press and wider exposure have translated into a respectable bump in his support among potential voters. As Ballot Access News reports:

On October 8, a poll taken by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research was released for the New Jersey gubernatorial race. It shows independent candidate Chris Daggett at his highest poll result so far, 14%. Jon Corzine, Democrat, leads with 41%; Chris Christie, Republican, has 38%; other or undecided 7%.

Though Daggett is still a long-shot in the race, trailing the duopolist stooges by significant margins, his candidacy has already begun to transform the discourse surrounding the campaign, and positively so. For instance, his effort has drawn attention to the duopoly parties' manipulation of the balloting process. The Press of Atlantic City editorializes:

Independent candidate Chris Daggett raised enough money to qualify for public financing and to participate in the gubernatorial debates. Fact is, a lot of political scientists and pundits say he "won" that debate. But on the ballot, he gets no break. His name is lost in a field of 10 independent and minor-party candidates. All of those candidates are at a distinct disadvantage to the Republican and Democratic candidates - who get the first two ballot positions. That's unfair. And it is just one more way that the major parties stack the deck against third parties to preserve their own power.

Daggett's viability has also clearly begun to confound commentators who rarely, if ever, think outside the narrative frames characteristic of duopoly ideology, embarrassingly revealing deep, unstated prejudices and privileges of the two-party political order. The NRO Horserace blog plays "gotcha" with Daggett, but get themselves got in the end:

Daggett also insisted that a poll has him at 17 percent. On his web site, in fact, it says, "The latest FDU poll shows Chris Daggett now at 17%." Strangely, there is no link to that poll. Unfortunately for Daggett, that's not the latest FDU poll. The most recent one has him at 4 percent*. In fact, there's no sign of a poll putting Daggett at 17 percent anywhere on the Fairleigh Dickinson web site, and it didn't get on Pollster.com, which does a pretty good job of collecting poll data. [Emphasis added.]

Was Daggett misinformed? Did FDU release and then rescind the poll? Was it a hallucination? Or is the candidate and campaign just making stuff up?

*UPDATE: Ah-ha. Daggett is at 4 percent when the pollster doesn't mention him and respondents have to volunteer him and at 17 percent when he is listed. The result was listed at Race42008. [Emphasis added.]

In light of this, it's a little cynical of FDU to list Daggett at 4 percent in their opening paragraph and mention that he's at 17 percent in the middle of the fifth paragraph. Daggett's name will be on all the ballots; it's not like he's running a write-in campaign