Anywhere else an incumbent polling at 46% is bad. You may think otherwise, and that's your prerogative.
I seem to remember (living across the water in Brooklyn at the time) that Torricelli was down in the polls by about 4 points (and falling) before he dropped out and SCONJ ruled his replacement by Frankenstein to be constitutional. Of course, the braindead voters in places like Woodbridge (the Rio Linda of New Jersey) saw Louse’s name and voted for him because they thought he WAS the incumbent.
That's the problem, it's not anywhere else, it's here in NJ.
Zimmer is a liberal republican running against a liberal dem. In that scenerio the dem always wins.