Why did New Jersey go so strongly for Gore?

[RRusso1982]

I can tell you exactly when New Jersey turned into a solid blue state.  After the 1994 Republican Revolution when the party became dominated by Newt Gingrich and Southern conservatives, plus demographic shifts that made the state more Democratic friendly.  Prior to that, New Jersey was a Republican leaning state.  It had gone Republican in every election between 1968 through 1988 and it only narrowly went for Clinton over Bush 41 in 1992 by 2 points.  Clinton won the national popular vote in 1992 by 5.5 points and won NJ by only 2 points, so NJ went R + 3 in 1992.  In 1996, Clinton won NJ over Dole by around 17 points.  Then in 1993 Christie Whitman narrowly won the Governor's race.  Between the Republican Revolution in 1994 and 2008, the only Republican victory was Christie Whitman's squeaker reelection in 1997.  It wasn't until 2009 after Bush was no longer in the front page of the news every day and the Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress by a large margin that NJ voters were willing to at least hear out the Republican candidate.  That is when Chris Christie won in 2009 by about 4 points.