Democrats White-Knuckling Close New Jersey Governor’s Race

Most of the known metrics for next Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in New Jersey suggest cautious optimism for Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill. All but one public poll in the entire cycle has shown her leading Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli, usually by a small but steady margin. Early voting numbers show much the same narrow Democratic margin in in-person voting (which concludes on Sunday), plus a big Democratic margin in voting by mail, that prevailed in 2021. That’s when current incumbent Phil Murphy defeated Ciattarelli by three percent — a shockingly low margin given both polling and expectations, but a win nonetheless. Overall early voting is up, which might simply reflect a competitive high-stakes race. Direct candidate spending is capped by New Jersey’s public campaign financing system, but heavy independent expenditures lean in Sherrill’s direction.

There is nonetheless a distinct air of uncertainty surrounding the ultimate results, and a lot of nervousness among Democrats. Much of the uncertainty flows from what might be called a double-incumbency phenomenon. Off year elections in New Jersey and elsewhere tend strongly to cut against the party controlling the White House, particularly when the occupant is as unpopular as Donald Trump is right now. But New Jersey hasn’t awarded its governorship to the same party for three straight elections since 1961, and two-term incumbent Murphy isn’t terribly popular either (Republicans blame him for high local taxes and high housing and utility costs). And Democratic jitters are attributable in no small part to Ciattarelli’s surprisingly strong showing in 2021 and Trump’s even more startling gains in 2024 (he cut the Democratic presidential margin in New Jersey from 16 percent to less than 6 percent). As my colleague David Freedlander recently explained, there are also doubts about how well Sherrill has campaigned:

A former Navy pilot, prosecutor, and three-term member of Congress, she has been an uninspiring campaigner, someone prone to word-salad answers and awkward freezes. “There is a generation of Democratic candidates who were brought up in a certain way, and now they are behaving in that way,” says one party strategist in the state. “She is a good person who would probably do a pretty good job as governor, but she is a product of a system that spits out replacement-level candidates.”

For his part, Ciattarelli has campaigned well, and is generating some unmistakable enthusiasm, but a lot of it is probably attributable to his self-transformation into a close ally of the president’s (he definitely wasn’t in 2021), which may cost him among swing voters. Trump’s recent decision to unilaterally cancel the Gateway Tunnel project that would give some relief to New Jersey commuters into New York did the Republican no favors. Nor has the administration’s abrasive, racially-profiling mass deportation program, which may well reverse the pro-GOP trend among Latino voters (a large presence in New Jersey) so evident last year.

Independents (who participate at reduced levels in non-presidential elections) tend to break against incumbent parties in elections like this one. But which incumbent will they punish? Given Trump’s unparalleled ability to dominate the news every hour of every day, you’d have to figure he will be more front-of-mind with undecided voters than Murphy, or at least that’s what Democrats hope.

Unlike the off-year contest in Virginia, where toxic texts from the Democratic nominee for attorney general have all but overshadowed the gubernatorial election, Sherrill and Ciattarelli have the spotlight all to themselves (the only other statewide office up this year is that of the Lieutenant Governor, who runs on a ticket with the candidate for governor). Some late public polls are being touted by Republicans as showing a surge for their candidate, but that could be because they were conducted by pollsters who are often pro-GOP outliers. Quantus Insights has Sherrill leading by three points, co/efficient shows her up by one, and Emerson — which had the race tied in September — has Sherrill up by two points, all results within the margin of error. The very latest poll, from Quinnipiac, has Sherrill ahead 51 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, pretty much where they had the race in September and early October.

Given lingering Democratic concerns about Sherrill, it’s worth noting that she over-performed expectations in the June primary, when she comfortably dispatched five viable rivals. And she may currently suffer in media perceptions by being compared unfavorably to New York City phenomenon Zohran Mamdani, a problem that probably won’t carry over to actual voters. As New Jersey native Matthew Cooper observed, she’s still favored unless some late developments cut the other way:

The best thing Sherrill has going for her is that no one inside the campaign thought this would be easy, and now they’ve had enough scares that they’re not taking anything for granted. The wind may finally be at Sherrill’s back, but as a helicopter pilot, she knows it can shift.  

When will we know the results? It depends. It’s worth noting that New Jersey is one of 22 states that allow mail ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if they are received by election officials within a set period of time (six days, in this case). This is a practice that Trump has loudly denounced as inherently fraudulent, so if the race is very close when Election Day ballots have been counted, you can expect some “stolen election” noise from the White House since mail ballots will definitely skew Democratic. It’s another reason Democrats everywhere are praying that Sherrill, as Cooper puts it, manages to stick the “landing.”