Copyright The Boston Globe
In recent years New Jersey has been a reliably blue state, but it took on a purplish complexion during Joe Biden’s presidency. In 2021, Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli outperformed his polling to come within striking distance of a statewide victory. Donald Trump similarly beat his low expectations in the state, holding Kamala Harris down to a mere 6-point victory in 2024. The big question heading into Election Day this year was whether Ciattarelli and the GOP could build on these impressive showings. The big answer to that question is a resounding “no.” Not only did Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mikie Sherrill defeat Ciattarelli by a resounding margin, she did so on the back of something Democrats have not encountered in a long time: a polling miss that undercounted their voters. Even the public surveys that found Sherrill comfortably beating her Republican opponent failed to capture the breadth of her support. On Election Day, the Real Clear Politics average of New Jersey polls showed Sherrill leading by a mere 3.3 points. When all the votes were counted, she beat that margin by 10 points to win with more than a 13 percent margin of victory. In the Trump years, American political analysts have been consumed with trepidation over the observable phenomenon of “hidden” GOP voters. Following the outcome in New Jersey, Democrats can now claim that they, too, can count on some level of under-the-radar support. That is a narrative with implications for American politics as profound as the realization that Trump’s political strength could be measured only at the ballot box. The scale of Sherrill’s victory and the degree to which it represents New Jersey’s return to its blue mean is apparent in how its constituencies voted. According to preliminary exit poll data, Sherrill’s campaign turned out the Democrat-voting minorities that had stayed home in 2021. Ciattarelli managed to win white voters, albeit by just 5 points, but he won only 31 percent of Hispanics, a meager 17 percent of Asian voters, and just 5 percent of African American voters. The swing toward the Democratic candidate among Hispanics was particularly pronounced. The state’s most Latino counties shifted toward Trump dramatically in 2024, even handing the Republican candidate victory in unlikely places like Passaic and Cumberland counties. This year, they shifted back in the Democrats’ direction, erasing the gains Trump engineered just one year ago. Sherrill trounced Ciattarelli among formally educated voters, who make up more than 40 percent the state’s population. Those with only a high school diploma or who did not graduate from high school made up just 21 percent of the electorate, and that was the only educational cohort Ciattarelli won. Sherrill beat the GOP candidate among independent voters by 7 points. When so-called true independents who self-report no affinity for either party were polled, they backed Sherrill by 15 points. Unsurprisingly, Sherrill won 91 percent of voters who disapprove of President Trump’s performance in office — a majority of voters. More surprisingly, Sherrill also won about 20 percent of the plurality of voters who also disapprove of outgoing two-term Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. The gender gap was particularly pronounced in Sherrill’s victory. The Republican candidate still won the men who made up 47 percent of the electorate, although by only a single point. The women who made up the majority of the vote, by contrast, backed Sherrill by an astounding 25 points. There was no exit poll of New Jersey voters in 2024. But pollsters did survey voters in neighboring Pennsylvania. There, Trump won voters over the age of 45 by significant margins. White voters backed him by 12 points, but he also won 41 percent of Hispanics and 10 percent of black voters. And in the Keystone State, the gender dynamic that was so beneficial to Sherrill was reversed. Trump romped with men, defeating Harris by 17 points among that demographic. But he only lost Pennsylvania women by 8 points. It’s no stretch to claim that women delivered victory to Trump in places like Pennsylvania in 2024, and they denied Republican candidates’ victory in 2025. Sherrill went into this election with some historic headwinds blowing in her campaign’s face. No party had managed to retain the governor’s office for three consecutive terms in New Jersey since 1961. Indeed, her predecessor, Murphy, is the first Democrat to serve out two full terms in the governor’s office since Brendan Byrne left office in 1982. She ran an uninspired campaign, and the scale of her victory matches the swing toward Democrats on Tuesday in places like Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — an indication that the swing was uniform and national in scope, a mini blue wave. In that sense, it is likely that opposition to Trump’s presidency was the primary factor in this election, perhaps even more than gender differences. This week’s results are an indication of how fragile and fleeting Trump’s 2024 coalition truly was. Republicans have struggled at the ballot box when the president is the dominant factor in races in which he’s not himself on the ballot. But Trump’s name will not grace the top of a national ticket again. If the electorate that turned out in New Jersey foreshadows the landscape Republicans will have to navigate in next year’s midterm elections, the GOP should anticipate a drubbing. It’s not too early for Republicans to panic.
