Why has the GOP held up so well in Morris County, NJ?

[Roll Roons]

For a very affluent and educated suburban county in the Northeast, Morris County strikes me as an anomaly in that it's way more Republican that you'd expect it to be.

Trump only lost it by 4 points and the GOP holds every countywide office and most of the state legislative seats. Jack Ciattarelli won it by double digits.

There's no significant religious or retiree presence and I know a lot of its voters are wealthy and fiscally conservative, but I feel like that still doesn't quite explain everything.

So what's the deal with it?

[Tekken_Guy]

Downballot this is still a very Republican county.

[Brittain33]

It has no real cities and, well, look at this and compare it to Somerset, Middlesex, Bergen...

https://us-places.com/New-Jersey/white-percentage-population-comparison.htm

[Tekken_Guy]

It has no real cities and, well, look at this and compare it to Somerset, Middlesex, Bergen...

https://us-places.com/New-Jersey/white-percentage-population-comparison.htm

Morris is basically where Somerset was a decade ago.

[Devils30]

The local GOP is still much more like Lance, Frelinghuysen. This part of NJ is a lot less Trumpy even on the GOP end of things.

[S019]

I mean I live here, so let me try to shed some light here, to begin with it's much more exurban than suburban, additionally the more Democratic and more populated parts (such as Morristown and Parsippany Troy Hills) are somewhat poorer, but still quite affluent, compared to their surroundings. Next it's pretty white, it's 82% white, the 3 other counties in the top 10 richest counties that were above 80% white were Hunterdon (91%), Douglas (92%), and Williamson (90%), all of which voted Republican in 2020. After Morris, the next most white in the top 10 was Howard at 74%, and while it voted overwhelming for Biden, Maryland suburbia has long been more friendly to Democrats than New Jersey suburbia. So putting all of this into perspective: its wealth, its more exurban nature, and its heavily white nature, it being a very competitive county is not all that surprising.

[Suburbia]

I don't think Morris has a racial problem either....yes, they're white exurbanites/suburbanites, but wealthy Black New Jerseyans can live there.....Whitney Houston lived in Mendham, Chris Christie's hometown since she made it big in the mid 1980s....

Don't you think?