Since the beginning of September, the betting odds at InTrade.com on Jon Corzine winning re-election as the Governor of New Jersey have done from about 50% to about 30% (at the beginning of October) and have been on a steady climb since, now trading well over 60%…let’s say equally about a 2/3 chance that Corzine will win.

The RealClearPolitics average of poll results shows the race in a dead heat, but the trend is certainly favorable for Corzine:

I realize that New Jersey is an exceptionally blue state, but this is a race that seemed for months to be easily within the reach of Republican Chris Christie, former US Attorney for the District of New York.  Unfortunately, Christie seemed unable or unwilling to propose any specific plans about how he would deal with the state’s enormous budget deficit.  Instead of arguing aggressively for pro-growth tax cuts, he waffled and simply said that Jon Corzine has a “failed record", which he most certainly does…but is that enough?

Christie’s overconfidence, almost smugness, is now leading to a surge of support for independent Chris Daggett who certainly can’t win, but who could possibly get 20% on election day if enough voters don’t decide to vote for Christie or Corzine simply because Daggett can’t win. (More likely, Daggett will get closer to 10% or 12%.)  It appears that Daggett is taking votes from both other candidates, but not surprisingly, most people who say they support Daggett would prefer Christie over Corzine.

In other words, Christie is losing votes to the independent because of his not having a convincing message.

It would be remarkable if New Jersey elected a Republican governor, not simply because of how liberal the state is, but also because of the message it would send to so-called moderate Democrats in the House and Senate.

I hope that Chris Christie can get his act together and make a compelling case for himself in the coming days before this election.  It’s not necessarily that he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, but he clearly does have pro-growth economic instincts, which is what New Jersey needs more than anything else right now.  It is rather remarkable that a guy who made so much money in finance (Corzine) is incapable of running a state government that probably isn’t that much more complicated than the company he ran before (Goldman Sachs.)

It’s true that Virginia is much more important than New Jersey in terms of electoral politics.  It is a state Obama probably needs to carry in 2012 to win a second term.  With bettors putting more than a 95% chance of the next governor of Virginia being a Republican, that should put a lot of worry into the hearts of southern “blue dog” Democrats.  We can only hope it’s enough fear to keep them from voting for cap-and-trade, Obamacare, and other fascist/socialist plans of the current Administration.

But Republicans shouldn’t comfort themselves with “at least we won Virginia” if Corzine wins re-election in New Jersey.  A GOP loss in New Jersey would represent an enormous victory for Democrats, including for Barack Obama who has been stumping for Corzine, just at a time when Obama seems to be losing political capital as rapidly as anyone since Jimmy Carter – maybe not too surprising since their policies are remarkably similar, in terms of supporting both economic idiocy and foreign policy weakness.

The GOP really needs to win New Jersey to send the message that needs to be sent.  A NJ/VA split will be seen as a victory for the Democrats, and although it may not end up representing anything good for the Democrats in the long run, if they win in NJ after seeming to be absolutely dead in the water, it will give the leftist leadership of the Democratic Party hope that they can make all kinds of mistakes in furtherance of their anti-capitalist agenda and still have a decent chance at re-election.  Their assessment will be wrong, but it won’t be proven so for another year, during which time they will do tremendous damage.  If it goes that way, Chris Christie and his weak campaign will have a lot to answer for.

(I should add that I have made a small wager on InTrade.com, betting that Christie will win the election…)