Tags
Alieta Eck, Cory Booker, Frank Pallone, New Jersey, politics, Rush Holt, Sheila Oliver, Steve Lonegan
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To finish our coverage of the primary of the New Jersey Senate race, we will be liveblogging the results, vote tallies and winners here. While we expect to have a pretty short night in terms of finding out who won both primaries, we will be trying to give you as much information as possible.
So use the comments section if you want, we could use more voices to add to more discussion!
8:48PM ET: Here’s our Booker piece. The liveblog will slow down now, we’ll be back later tonight for number crunching.
8:46PM ET: AP calls it for Booker.
8:43PM ET: Booker is running train right now in Essex County which is his home county. Has about 65% of the vote with 9% of precincts reporting. Oliver is in third here.
8:39PM ET: AP calls Republican primary for Steve Lonegan.
8:38PM ET: Booker is taking off. 57% of the vote goes to him and 12,000+ votes. Pallone trails at 25%, Holt at 14% and Oliver at 5%.
8:34PM ET: AP has Booker with over 6,000 votes and 55%. Pallone follows with 3k and 27%, Holt at 15% and 1,750 and Oliver at 3% with almost 400 votes. Booker is dominating Gloucester County with nearly 65% of the vote with 42% reporting.
8:30PM ET: Booker now hovering at 50% with 51.3%. Pallone follows at 29.2%, Holt at 15.8% and Oliver at 3.7%. Hudson shows Booker dominating and Pallone has Monmouth County (his backyard).
8:22PM ET: Booker is now over 50% in the early going at 53% according to AP. Pallone in second at 25%, Holt at 17% and Oliver at 4%. Ocean County now starting to report. Pallone needs to do well here.
8:17PM ET: Booker now launches ahead. 47.4%, 29.2% for Holt, Pallone at 19.9% and Oliver at 3.4%. Somerset and Gloucester Counties are now filling in. Gloucester is in the South Jersey area (my neighboring county) and Booker has pretty much shored up the entire South Jersey area.
8:12PM ET: New numbers from POLITICO. Holt is at 47.6%, Booker is at 32.7%, Pallone at 17.1% and Oliver at 2.6%. Keep in mind this is from Hunterdon County which is Holt country.
8:04PM ET: POLITICO is keeping tabs on the race. Very, very, very early totals show Booker with 39.4%, Holt with 34.3%, Pallone with 20.2% and Oliver with 6.1%. This has come from Warren County.
8:01PM ET: According to a source to PolitickerNJ, Booker blew away the field in Hudson County in terms of vote via mail. Booker received an estimated 72% of the vote with Pallone getting 18%, Holt getting 7% and Oliver receiving 4%.
8:00PM ET: Polls have closed.
7:50PM ET: Our final guesses are: Booker-49%, Pallone-24%, Holt-22%, Oliver-5%.
7:40PM ET: Polls close at 8pm and results are expected to file in immediately after with the potential of the AP, CNN, NBC, FOX all calling the race for Booker and Lonegan.
7:22PM ET: Another last minute plea to not vote for Cory Booker by Democratic site, Crooks & Liars. This one is a bit more in-depth version of the piece by Salon’s Alex Pareene today. What kind of upsets me about this is that there is more bringing down Booker than propping up his opponents. Booker has his flaws, no doubt about that, but you hear more about him (even by people complaining about his popularity) than you do Frank Pallone, Rush Holt and Sheila Oliver combined. Let this be a memo to those who are against a certain candidate, you’ll get more bang for your buck propping up someone instead and comparing them to the other one.
6:55PM ET: Turnout is expected to be low today thanks in part to a few facts. One, its mid-August and plenty of people are probably enjoying the end of their summers at the shore or on vacation elsewhere. Two, its widely assumed Cory Booker will win (and Steve Lonegan on the Republican side) and that might depress some of the vote. Three, New Jersey got HAMMERED by a storm this morning; our local CBS affiliate was on the air all morning for what its worth. At my polling place, there were about three voters there including myself. My sister at 10am said she was the only voter in the house there as well. Then again, expect plenty of mail-in ballots as well.
6:45PM ET: Before we get to some of the results, it appears Cory Booker has been dealing with some ethical woes. Okay scratch that, completely alleged ethical woes. Booker’s ties with the internet start-up Waywire have been examined for the past week and we still don’t have all the answers. We do know that Booker started the company and that it has netted him between $1 and $5 million. Check out the latest post from ABC News.