NJ In Play?

Quinnipiac says so:

President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry remain locked in a very close race in New Jersey, a state critical to Kerry's presidential hopes, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Forty-nine percent of likely voters surveyed favored Kerry to 46 percent for Bush. Independent candidate Ralph Nader got 2 percent of support from likely voters. With the sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points thrown in, the race is still neck-and-neck. The last Quinnipiac poll released on Sept. 21 had the two candidates tied 48-48 percent among likely voters in a state that Democrat Al Gore carried by 16 percentage points four years ago.

If Kerry is close in Jersey, the rest of the real swing states should mostly go for Bush. How bad of a Democratic candidate do you have to be to not even hold a substantial lead in NJ in October?