NJ-GOV 2021 megathread

[Alben Barkley]

Murphy win seems likely but not certain.

Everyone's been sleeping on this one but if Murphy somehow loses too, that would be 10 times worse than Youngkin winning in VA.

I don't think it's at all likely however.

[Alben Barkley]

So Murphy has lost the lead... not panicking yet given where the votes are. But I think it's pretty obvious that Murphy will at least underperform significantly. More evidence that there would a national red wave in this environment.

[Alben Barkley]

I ran some numbers and Ciatarelli could very well win this.

Moreover, Bergen dumpoff has Ciatarelli leading by 55-45.

If this happens, to say the party will need to do some soul-searching is a massive understatement. Will be even worse than the GOP losses in 2017.

[Alben Barkley]

All eyes should be on this race now, I'm shocked the thread isn't blowing up. There's a very real shot of an upset now. A much bigger and more unexpected one than in VA.

[Alben Barkley]

I mean the ad was kinda spammy and annoying but Murphy saying NJ's not your state if you don't like high taxes is probably not the best statement.

He actually said that?

[Alben Barkley]

Ciattarelli's margin up to 53,000 votes.

Yes, this is a bit of a red mirage. All of the election day votes are being added in right now.

It doesn't appear any of the VBM have been added in, those were like D+40 based on party.

Not what Kornacki said. He said all in Essex County counted so far is mail, with lots of same day left. Meanwhile in the counties that are done counting or near it, Ciattarelli is hitting his targets.

[Alben Barkley]

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.

Hell, same for CA as well.

[Alben Barkley]

Ciattarelli's margin up to 53,000 votes.

Yes, this is a bit of a red mirage. All of the election day votes are being added in right now.

It doesn't appear any of the VBM have been added in, those were like D+40 based on party.

Don't push this woke garbage! The Republican is going to win and it's racist against white people to say otherwise!

Man, can you please stop whining and attacking things that literally no one ever said for like 5 minutes? We're just trying to figure out numbers here. Numbers don't care about feelings or ideology.

[Alben Barkley]

Something's weird here. If Ciattarelli was in position to win, wouldn't Youngkin be winning by like 10%?

That assumes a strong correlation between the NJ and VA results that there's no real reason to assume exists, especially for a state level race.

[Alben Barkley]

It's times like these I wish we still had THE NEEDLE

[Alben Barkley]

Man I really hope Murphy wins because I don't want to have to spell the other guy's name every time I want to talk about the NJ governor.

[Alben Barkley]

I'm very confused, is Murphy likely going to win or will he probably lose?

I wouldn't say probably yet, but Murphy is a slight underdog based on my spreadsheet estimates. If I was going to bet real money, I would put mine on Ciatarelli.

PredictIt has it at 70-30 Murphy, FWIW.

That really isn't worth much of anything lol

[Alben Barkley]

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1455736858164572165?s=20

The plot thickens

Slightly off topic but Nate Cohn is by far my favorite of the Twitter forecaster guys. Pretty much nailed VA-GOV from the outset.

I always keep a tab open with Cohn and Wasserman's Twitter accounts on every election night.

[Alben Barkley]

You know who should really be sweating tonight? Gretchen Whitmer.

There is no other explanation for the closeness of these results besides Murphy's strict Covid policies. He was a generic D Democrat and most of his policies didn't get people too angry, and Ciatarelli ran a competent but uninspired campaign.

It's almost like vaccinated people aren't particularly happy about having restrictions forced on them when they did the right thing months ago.

The worst of this was before the vaccines rolled out - keeping indoor dining shut indefinitely long after the crisis abated, for instance - but yeah, people are done with the fact that there doesn't seem to be an offramp here.

The crazy part is that a lot of Dems seem to WANT the pandemic to last forever. Getting vaccinated 10 times, triple masking, massively overestimating the risk of hospitalization/death, some even still refusing to go out and eat indoors or anything. It all looks hypochondriac and frankly insane to a lot of people. This thing isn't the Black Death. It sucks, but it mostly kills very old and very fat people, to be brutally honest. I get it's frustrating that a lot of loons still won't get vaxxed which would help speed up the process but smugly mocking them probably isn't helping. It just is nuts that this has become such a politicized, polarized culture war issue akin to abortion or something on both sides with no end in sight. America has gone off the deep end.

[Alben Barkley]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1455747042366705665?s=20

I mostly agree with this take. A national environment that makes VA R+1 probably makes NJ a narrow D win, and that's where we appear heading. So any state specific issues on either side of the coin in our nationalized elections probably are marginal at best.

LOL at people still thinking Morris has credibility after 2020.

Also he's wrong. State level elections aren't nearly as correlated with one another as federal races like House and Senate races, let alone presidential elections. The right candidate at the right time with the right message can overcome a bad partisan lean and/or national environment for his/her state. Just ask Governor Beshear.

[Alben Barkley]

Murphy will probably win, but it will be embarrassing if Youngkin wins by a larger margin than him.

More embarrassing is a Republican winning an election in Seattle.

Considering her opponent literally wanted to abolish the police entirely, not too surprising.

Once again a massive blow (and what should be a massive wake-up call) to the commies who think Twitter is real life.

[Alben Barkley]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1455747042366705665?s=20

I mostly agree with this take. A national environment that makes VA R+1 probably makes NJ a narrow D win, and that's where we appear heading. So any state specific issues on either side of the coin in our nationalized elections probably are marginal at best.

Yeah, I mean, to this point, look at the 2019 gubernatorial elections. Dems won in Kentucky and Louisiana when they honestly had no business doing so and kept Mississippi close at least in part because the environment was quite good for them. Candidate quality had something to do with it, sure, but parties win in inhospitable terrain when it's an off-off-year and the president is underwater by ten points. It's just what happens.

It's funny you cite those but take totally opposite conclusions from them. Keep in mind that Dems won in KY and LA in 2015 as well (not Gov. in KY's case that year, but other statewide Dems including Beshear for AG, and his dad won in 2011, also not a great environment for Dems), which was not a good environment for Dems at all. Some states, including these, historically have been way more likely to keep state level politics separate from federal politics. New Jersey is another one, actually, as it has only re-elected a Dem for governor once in like 40 years.

[Alben Barkley]

Murphy will probably win, but it will be embarrassing if Youngkin wins by a larger margin than him.

Heres the good news for the Dem establishment tho: They still have 13 months to make excuses, find scapegoats, and avoid responsibility for the inevitable 2022 shellacking. I wonder what/who it will be this time? Ralph Nader? Russia? Muh media?

Just about every single "progressive" candidate and policy up tonight got blown out of the water, even in blue cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, and Buffalo. Also as mentioned Murphy himself is pretty damn "progressive" and got an enthusiastic endorsement from Bernie Sanders.

But sure, it's all "the establishment" and I'm sure AOC would win in a landslide if we nominated her or someone like her for president.

[Alben Barkley]

Murphy did all the supposedly super popular progressive stuff (legalized marijuana, raised taxes on the rich, $15 minimum wage, etc.) and it doesn't seem to have helped at all. Voters do not vote on policy; they vote on vibes. Seems bad for the long-term viability of democracy, IMO.

This has, of course, always been the case.

And it leaves Democrats with a problem which is at once simple and all too difficult to solve: their vibes are simply atrocious at the moment.

Those bickering over who’s progressive or moderate enough need to hear this. People vote based on feelings. The Democratic Party needs new blood, and to give a different impression to voters; policy and ideology are secondary to voters.

This is why Bernie is better electorally than AOC. AOC seems like a whiny socially far-leftist whereas Bernie seems like an old angry dude who cares about people and wants to shake up the system.

Quoted for Truth!!!!

Bernie is also 100 years old, even older than Biden. It’s time to let him go and move on.

[Alben Barkley]

The race is over, Dave called it and he is literally never wrong. But it was pathetically close.

[Alben Barkley]

His campaign was actually worse than McAuliffe's, if you ask me.

Probably something to this considering Murphy actually fell farther from Biden 2020 than McAuliffe. About a 16 point rightward shift in NJ vs. a 12 point rightward shift in VA. Obviously both are horrendous, but Murphy seems to have been (barely) saved solely by the fact that NJ is a bit more Democratic than VA still.