NJ-GOV 2021 megathread

[kwabbit]

Has there been any polling of this race recently or any word of polling to come?

It would be useful to see if Murphy has fallen in popularity. I imagine he's quite popular at the moment.

If I were to guess NJ will be the last state to fully reopen after mass vaccination, just like it was this past year, which could hurt him in the summer and into the election season.

[kwabbit]

I was raised in New Jersey and have consulted for successful campaigns in both parties there. The only thing mildly inaccurate about my post was the Mississippi comparison, since Mississippi has no white moderates, let alone liberals. But the point was still obviously correct — Phil Murphy is wasting time going after the sort of socially-liberal suburban whites who still obsess over Trump.

Nearly every major competitive campaign in the state today employs a strategy that takes most white and all black voters for granted and focuses on the middle (see 2009) — the only way things vary are in a non-competitive landslide like the anti-Trump, anti-Christie wave the state saw in 2017–18 (where a significant minority of conservative whites voted Democratic) or Christie's 2013 win (where he picked up a fair number of black voters).

Murphy's strategy is betting on a similar statewide environment, and it clearly isn't working. At this point in 2017, for comparison, Guadagno had basically stopped fundraising. Most people I've talked to say this is a worse incumbent campaign than Corzine's (who had the environment more strongly against him) and possibly the worst ever. (Keep in mind this is a low bar; incumbents have only been running since 1947 and only a few have lost.) That doesn't mean he'll lose, obviously. I think he'll survive pretty comfortably despite himself.

I also probably should have used "progressive"; forgot this site uses idiosyncratic (though more accurate, to its credit) ideological terms, but everyone in the real world still calls extreme Democrats liberals.

How is Murphy running a bad campaign?

Yeah, if anything Murphy has been running a pretty good campaign considering the history of Democratic incumbents in this state.

Ciatarelli meanwhile is literally not even campaigning and is virtually invisible.

Idk what media market you’re in, but Ciatarelli ads are plastered over cable and billboards in the Philly and NYC markets. Unless you mean in person campaigning, but he’s doing what he needs to to raise name recognition.

[kwabbit]

It's looking like Murphy +4 or something based on county shifts. If Murphy didn't have his period of massive popularity a year ago this might've gone Ciatarelli's way. Biden is clearly quite unpopular. No one wants to vote for Dems right now.

[kwabbit]

Will Youngkin's margin exceed Murphy's? An open question. Ciatarelli is massively exceeding Trump in typical Jersey moderate R fashion. +18 over Trump in Monmouth, +17 in Hunterdon. Not enough for him to win, but embarrassingly close for Murphy.

[kwabbit]

Some of the blue counties are reporting next to nothing.

Bergen, which had Murphy +15 in 2017 with 200K+ votes is reporting... 2,000 votes right now.

But what if Ciattarelli wins Bergen...

Trolling.

Bergen was Biden +16, not out of the question for Ciatarelli to win. Ciatarelli is blowing out Trump in Monmouth and Hunterdon, exceeding by over 16%

[kwabbit]

Some of the blue counties are reporting next to nothing.

Bergen, which had Murphy +15 in 2017 with 200K+ votes is reporting... 2,000 votes right now.

But what if Ciattarelli wins Bergen...

Trolling.

Bergen was Biden +16, not out of the question for Ciatarelli to win. Ciatarelli is blowing out Trump in Monmouth and Hunterdon, exceeding by over 16%

...in the election day vote. That's a pretty important distinction

In early+eday, right? I'm assuming the intial dumps were early and then the rest were e-day. The initial dumps were a lot less for Ciatarelli and then the margins have expanded. I don't see why the dump would be e-day and then early would trickle in.

[kwabbit]

It doesn't appear we have any answers as to whether the VBM has been counted yet.

It definitely hasn't. Mail ballots weren't even due until today, those will probably pad Murphy's margin a bit in the end.

[kwabbit]

It doesn't appear we have any answers as to whether the VBM has been counted yet.

It definitely hasn't. Mail ballots weren't even due until today, those will probably pad Murphy's margin a bit in the end.

Can we expect those to be counted and tabulated soon, or...?

I really doubt it. They'll probably trickle in since a lot are yet to arrive. Remember NJ-07 was undecided for a few weeks because of the mail ballots. NJ doesn't have a speedy election administration as is the case in a lot of blue states like NY or CA.

[kwabbit]

It doesn't appear we have any answers as to whether the VBM has been counted yet.

It definitely hasn't. Mail ballots weren't even due until today, those will probably pad Murphy's margin a bit in the end.

Can we expect those to be counted and tabulated soon, or...?

I really doubt it. They'll probably trickle in since a lot are yet to arrive. Remember NJ-07 was undecided for a few weeks because of the mail ballots. NJ doesn't have a speedy election administration as is the case in a lot of blue states like NY or CA.

NY has a speedy election administration??? That's new.

Lol maybe my wording should've been clearer. I mean it doesn't, just like NY and CA are disastrously slow.

[kwabbit]

There's a Guido revolt against carpetbagger Massachusetts Murphy. Bergen is looking bad for Murphy lol. Honestly, maybe Jersey Jack was a good branding and NJ voters are annoyed with NYC finance executives carpetbagging into our state.

[kwabbit]

Ignoring that though, the red mirage should vanish just by the 70K D eday votes that should be net by Essex.

If all early and mail votes in Essex County have already been counted, and there are just 70K election day votes there to be counted, then Dems have some severe turnout issues in NJ which have opened the door for Ciattarelli to win. That would mean that there are 110K total votes in Essex and there are at least 200K total votes in Ocean, while they had about the same number of total votes in 2020.

70K net. And that's just a guess from 2017 numbers. Also Passaic is doing the same thing as Essex.

I doubt Passaic will net that much. It was Biden +16, right now Murphy +10, if anything the remainder of votes might favor Ciattarelli.

[kwabbit]

Can Ciattarelli still win?!

Yes. Look at the Somerset results. Murphy is massively underperforming in this county that Biden won.

Isn't he overperforming his 2017 win there?

No, it flipped after some e-day votes came in presumably. Now 54-44 Jack

[kwabbit]

Ciattarelli's lead is shrinking and Murphy is the favorite, but he has a decent reservoir of votes in Sussex and Salem. Whether Bergen's remaining votes are VBM or not makes a huge difference. If they're in person, it's a race. If they are VBM, Murphy is going to hang on.

[kwabbit]

Burlington and Mercer just dumped, Ciattarelli maintains his lead 13 pts to 10, Mercer goes from Murphy +10 to +15.

[kwabbit]

Who will win?

Murphy likely. It remains to be seen what VBM does. GOP does have votes in the hole in Sussex and Salem though.

[kwabbit]

DDHQ seems somewhat ahead of NYT. It has the Bergen VBM and the Sussex/Salem votes. Ciattarelli still up by 18k votes.  

[kwabbit]

Turnout has exceeded 2017 numbers. There's more left to count, but it's not at 80% reported. Probably between 90 and 95%. NJ has grown maybe 3% since 2017, and this election has been extremely low-key. Turnout's not hitting 2.7 million or whatever that percentage implies.

[kwabbit]

Murphy now ahead on DDHQ. Cumberland, Cape May have a decent amount left. Essex and Hudson might, but it's hard to know whether those percentages are accurate or not. Late VBM could decide this race, and very late VBM was R last year as we remember.

[kwabbit]

I don't see a path for victory for Ciatarelli, given what's outstanding, but this was much, much more exciting than I expected. It does disappoint for Jack to come so close without winning. Hope was raised and dashed.

[kwabbit]

This election has nearly destroyed the South Jersey Norcross machine in one fell swoop. Sweeney is gone, and Democrats look toxic to South Jersey bar the immediate Camden area and AC. Norcross' brother and Van Drew are still in Congress, but the next person to represent NJ-02 will not be a Norcross protégé.

I wonder how much of the collapse was caused by the strained relationship between Norcross and Murphy. Perhaps Norcross didn't turn out those Dem votes for Murphy like he usually would, expecting for his candidates to be fine, but in the end he paid the price as well.

Just a startling result; it might be a new era of NJ state politics.

[kwabbit]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pWm-E6k-nsFNQZU8oJpYxcN1iVuv2VpA1d0A_03rz1U/edit#gid=1371359546

We're not done counting yet, but it's safe to say the margin won't change too much.
I input my county-only results.

1) Not surprisingly, the highest turnout came from red counties. Their turnout mostly ranged from 59-66% of 2020 turnout. Some of the most important blue counties' turnouts were below 50% of 2020 turnout.

2) Cittarelli improved upon Trump's margin in almost every county by double digits except Hudson county, where margin roughly stayed the same. It is one of the counties Trump made significant inroad in 2020. You'd have thought Cittarelli could input more damage to it. Nope. Truly odd anomaly.

Many Republicans would have voted more if they knew it was going to be this close. Republicans that sat out this election thinking Murphy had it in the bag is going to be banging their feet.

For those interested, I have my bluest and reddest cities in 2020 in "Total" tab, which is the leftmost tab. The bluest city was East Orange City and reddest city was Lakewood. 

Lakewood, huh?  So what did Murphy do to pass off the Orthodox community.

Orthodox Jews are just ultra-R federally. Murphy has actually done well with the Orthodox community of Lakewood, garnering the Vaad's (the rabbinical counsel) endorsement in both of his campaigns. Such what could've been a 20k vote net for Ciattarelli into a 4k net. A relatively important endorsement, worth .5% in margin. This is part of the reason Ocean didn't swing too much from the presidential. Ocean would've been 71-28 instead of 68-32 if the endorsement went the other way. I was surprised when the Vaad endorsed Murphy, given the tensions experienced because of COVID restrictions affecting them practicing their religion.

[kwabbit]

Well, a win is a win, but 2,7-2,8% win in Biden+16 state is nothing to brag about. New Jersey is quintessential suburban state, so at least some "backward" (to Republican party) movement of educated suburbanites possibly takes place. Combined with energization of Republican electorate and continued Democratic bleeding among WWC and in rural areas - situation is serious, to put it mildly..

The story of the election is that Murphy and other Dems completely collapsed in South Jersey. They held up quite well in Morris, Somerset, and Hunterdon. If anything it’s foreboding a massive collapse for the Dems in the Midwest given how WWC it is. But I wouldn’t be too worried for the Dems in suburban Chicago or Atlanta where they’ve made big gains with educated Whites.

[kwabbit]

Thanks for filling in for Bronz during his time out.

This definitely part of the reason. The fact that Murphy is yet another Manhattan financier carpetbagging vs. Ciatarelli being a native New Jerseyan did make some difference. Ciatarelli definitely thought so, labelling himself as 'Jersey Jack'.

Italians are definitely a problem group for Democrats. They are one of the few upwardly mobile White groups that have trended R during the Trump era.

[kwabbit]

You all think this is because Hispanic Trump voters truly are "low-propensity"? Or is this is an example of downballot trends lagging? Or does it show that Trump 2020 was a fluke among Hispanics? Or somewhere in between?

Or does it show nothing at all?

I don't think the Hispanic swing to Trump was a fluke, given Biden's poor approvals among Hispanics, but Republicans will have to earn the Hispanic vote. Ciattarelli's property tax and 'New Jersey native' based campaign probably didn't resonate with Hispanic voters. Culture war tactics might, but any NJ Republican knows to avoid that.

Any analysis about the future of the Hispanic vote really needs 2022 to become meaningful.

[kwabbit]

I've been compiling town-by-town results in a Google Sheet. So far 13 counties have certified out of 21.

Trenton only had 9,000 votes? Wow. Hamilton is roughly the same population and had 3x that amount. I guess Trenton's Hispanic population is significantly non-citizen or too young, but that is a very stark difference.