Discussion at Monmouth University

Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Patrick Murray and Dr. Richard F. Veit about the poll that Mr. Murray helped conduct asking New Jersey residents what towns in NJ they thought were North, South and Central.

This is worth the read to for the statistics alone, but is also interesting to see how "Central" evolved into the data.

During my drive back, I saw this sign:

on the entrance ramp to the Garden State Parkway (exit 105). You will see this is very few places in the state. What does that all mean?

That the state feels there are too many trucks in North Jersey and is diverting them all South.

But seriously, having a working knowledge on what a parkway actually is, may clue us into why this sign exists. Still you can email me or post a comment on what you think this picture's caption should be . . . it could be quite fun.

Monmouth University/ Gannett New Jersey Poll

First of all, check out this map that I found on one of the myspace discussion groups. It is not our line, but funny:

Anyway, a new Monmouth University/ Gannett New Jersey Poll was just released today asking people the North/South/Central Jersey question. It is definitely worth checking out, but I must say it humbles me.

It took me months to get people in every county to draw lines on a map . . . . and then begging them that middle schoolers would also get a learning experience out of it. Otherwise, people would give me dirty looks on the streets of many towns (I would have given myself a dirty look too). Oh well, if all of you go see the film (we will released details on this blog) then maybe I'll have some money to be able to do fancy polling like that! But it is broken down pretty well.

We do have our own county-by-county results; it is detailed and it was many, many miles of driving (I promise, environmental lobby, that I'll buy carbon offsets eventually). A lot of credit goes to the kids for taking all of my data, tallying the results, graphing and showing patterns. Again, our info will be available when the film is released.