How we voted. And why.

Wes Chalker didn't know for whom he was going to vote until he walked into the polling booth yesterday afternoon.

Then, the 63-year-old retired insurance executive -- who went for Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine four years ago -- cast his vote for Republican Chris Christie.

"I had mixed emotions," said Chalker, standing outside the Mendham firehouse amid a steady stream of voters entering and exiting the building where Christie himself had voted just hours before.

Many voters across the state expressed similar sentiments, offering little enthusiasm for either candidate and making their decisions at the last minute. In the end, large numbers of them ultimately decided they just did not want four more years of Jon Corzine.

According to exit polling for the National Election Pool conducted by Edison Research, Corzine and Christie were more likely to elicit negative feelings among voters than favorable ones. At the same time, independent voters broke strongly for Christie, by a two-to-one margin.

That spelled the difference between victory and defeat, said Cliff Zukin, a political scientist at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. If Corzine had just split the independents, he would have had enough to win.

Still, it was clear voters were not happy with the choices.

"New Jerseyans had more negative than positive feelings for all the candidates. They would have taken none of the above," Zukin said. "The independents saw it as a referendum and they went for a candidate they didn't like very much."

Issac Prince, 46, of Plainfield, who manages a family-owned retail store, called the election a choice between "the lesser of two evils." He said he supported Corzine despite the state's economic troubles, saying he did not trust Christie to keep his promise to lower taxes.

"Those who talk about it usually can't do anything about it," Prince said.

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