and what part of the country is jersey in again?
via Ace, Michelle Malkin: New Jersey split even in the polls.

While it would certainly be wonderful if Bush actually manages to somehow take NJ, the part of this poll that is interesting to me relates to my home battleground state of Pennsylvania. For those what live on the left coast and went to public school, NJ shares a long border with PA, right next to Philadelphia. In fact, having lived all over PA and NJ, I've often said that you could go about twenty miles west of Philadelphia and draw a line, making everything to the east of that line part of Jersey, because both geographically and culturally it bears more resemblance to that state than PA.

I'm going to have to google up an electoral map, but in Pennsylvania the vast majority of counties numerically went to Bush in '00. Pittsburgh, maybe Scranton or Erie, and of course Philadelphia and some territory surrounding Philly went to Gore, and he carried the state. What this means to me is that if the folks in Jersey are suddenly trending right, there's a good chance some of their cousins right across the border are doing the same thing. Which bodes extremely well for Bush, because he dosen't need to pick up much to carry this state, a few more R's in a D county could do the trick.

Kerry may still take NJ, but the Jersey devil could bite him in the ass none the less.  ¶ 9:46 PM