New Jersey - D +7.1%
Governor Phillip D. Murphy (D) / Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver - 1,214,900 votes, 50.59%
Assemblyman Jack M. Ciattarelli (R) / Diane Allen - 960,100 votes, 43.49%
You really think that 7% of New Jersey voters will vote for a third party? They get 1% at most here.
Also Gloucester voting Democratic while Somerset doesn't? I'm telling you all for the last time, Ciatarelli will not get a home county boost. Murphy might not win Somerset by over 20% like Biden did, but this county is long gone for Republicans at the state level. It might even be the epitome of the suburbs trending to the Democrats.
Somerset is not long gone for the GOP at the state level. Murphy only won it by 2 pts in 2017 while he won by 14 statewide. Ciatarelli probably won't win it but NJ county trends are lagging significantly behind their federal trends.
I'm well aware of the nationwide trend lag, but that would still mean, after four years since Murphy's last election, that Somerset has still lurched leftward more. And I still say that it's gone for the GOP. Let's be real here, the profoundly unpopular Bob Menendez won it by six points in 2018. I expect Murphy, who is popular, to do better than that, or meet that margin at the bare minimum.
Doing some simple math, Somerset trended about 6 points left from 2016 to 2020 given presidential results. If Somerset did the same, going from 12 points to the right in 2017 GOV to 6 points to the right in 2021 GOV, Murphy would hit that 6% win with a 12 point statewide win. Perhaps Ciatarelli will get some sort of home county boost, which has traditionally been quite powerful in previous NJ gubernatorial elections, but it shouldn't really sway it. Maybe it gets pushed to R+8 from the statewide from that.
I myself would say that Murphy is more likely than not to win the county. I'm just saying it's overconfident to say it's gone for the GOP. Any reasonably close result in the statewide race would lead to a Ciatarelli victory. If you think there's no way Murphy wins by less than 7 pts then yeah, Somerset won't be won by Ciatarelli, but if you foresee the possibility of the statewide race becoming tight then saying it's gone is cognitively dissonant. It's an NJ gubernatorial election, writing off a strong Republican result is forgetting the past.
