Why is South Jersey trending more Republican?

[Suburbia]

Is it, and why?

[Brittain33]

It’s rural.

[Tintrlvr]

Lower educational attainment and less wealthy than north Jersey. The nice parts of the Philly metro are in Pennsylvania. This is being exacerbated in the present day due to changing commuting trends by the lack of good public transit options into Philly from the New Jersey side. And also the rural aspect as mentioned outside of the Philly metro area.

Plus South Jersey has a soft spot for anti-urbanist politics generally because they're the less populous and thus less powerful part of a state dominated by the NYC metro in the north.

[Lourdes]

There's a pretty large amount of white working-class people here.

[cvparty]

There's a pretty large amount of white working-class people here.

yeah, there’s a large blue-collar population here compared to north jersey, it’s far less wealthy and educated. some areas are kind of redneck-y like vineland and milltown. the only area like north jersey is the relatively small stretch of wealthy suburbs from haddonfield to medford (which are trending D). NJ at large is known for being a rich/educated state, but south jersey is mostly about average

[Brittain33]

It’s funny how I immediately read this as being about NJ-2 when South Jersey is bigger than that.

[lfromnj]

I would wait until 2020 to call any Jersey trends. Areas like Cape May are definetely trending R but not sure about areas like Burlington. Sandy had weird effects.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

On top of everything else that people have said, the larger WWC population also shows up in the form of more intact Italian/Irish political machines than you find in North Jersey; you probably wouldn't find black or Latino politicians with the profile of Booker or Menendez coming out of Camden or Atlantic City even though those places do have significant minority populations. One of my Assemblymen when I was living in South Jersey was literally referred to (by some) as Boss Malone. So the "white ethnic" stratum of New Jersey society is overrepresented in both South Jersey's general population and its political class, relative to the more racially inclusive or racially "participatory" North Jersey machines. And old-school "white ethnics" in the suburban Northeast are not only the lion's share of Trump's floor in these states but in fact a bigger part of his nationwide base than most people realize--see Trumpy Republicans like Geoff Diehl and Bob Stefanowski rising to prominence in Lower New England state parties recently, Trump's New England and Acela corridor landslides in the primary, Trump winning counties in Connecticut and Rhode Island in the general election, etc.

[pikachu]

I want to say maybe? Definitely trended that way during 2016, but 2017 was a pretty standard NJ Dem victory map both North and South, and Democrats did sweep it during the midterms, even if the NJ-2 performance was disappointing (though one could say the opposite about NJ-3...). And while South Jersey is comparatively rural/white/WWC compared to North Jersey, it is also essentially just Philly suburbs and imo isn't particularly isolated from the city itself.

[Stańczyk]

Ever heard of "Pineys"? South Jersey (especially in the interior) has a greater affinity with Delmarva/points south than North Jersey, which if it hadn't been completely overrun by New York sprawl has more cultural similarities to New England. In 1976, Carter swept Southern whites as well as South Jersey but got wiped out in rural North Jersey. Just goes to show.

[Senator Incitatus]

On top of everything else that people have said, the larger WWC population also shows up in the form of more intact Italian/Irish political machines than you find in North Jersey; you probably wouldn't find black or Latino politicians with the profile of Booker or Menendez coming out of Camden or Atlantic City even though those places do have significant minority populations.

An addendum to this is that Camden and especially Atlantic City are extremely small cities proper. Their population, even within the Democratic Party, is drowned out by the suburbs. Because of the various methods of party representation, all of the black and Latino residents are in one small basket – unlike North Jersey.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

South Jersey strikes me as filled with a bunch of Jersey Shore style Italians, like The Situation.