New Jersey Election Turnout Update

Recent data indicates that New Jersey Republicans are proving to be more competitive in in-person voting compared to 2021, though they still trail overall due to a significant gap in mail-in voting.

On the first day of early voting, which spans nine days, Democrats recorded a higher in-person turnout than Republicans, with figures at 42% for Democrats and 39% for Republicans, while 19% identified with other parties.

Democrats had a lead of 2,527 votes in the total in-person turnout. This data was compiled by Michael Pruser, who is the Director of Data Science at DecisionDeskHQ.

However, this lead is less than the nearly 12-point advantage Democrats held (44% to 32%) in in-person voting after all was tallied in 2021, which amounted to 26,717 votes.

Despite this progress, the gap widens when considering mail-in voting, highlighting a substantial challenge for the Republican side.

Mika Rasmussen, the director of the Lebovich Institute for Politics at Rider University in New Jersey, noted, “This was just the first of nine days of early voting. It won’t last forever. But if Republicans don’t step up, Democrats could enter Election Day with a deficit of 275,000 votes.”

The current data reflects party affiliation but doesn’t reveal whether those who have already voted support Republican Jack Ciatarelli or Democrat Mikie Sherrill. So, the situation looks somewhat challenging for the Republican Party as a whole, at least for now.

Continuing through next Sunday, New Jersey Republicans have been outperformed by Democrats in mail-in voting. So far, of around 550,000 ballots cast—either by mail or in early voting—60% belong to Democrats, 24% to Republicans, and 16% to others.

By the end of the 2021 campaign, more than 780,000 New Jersey voters had cast early ballots, with a distribution of 22% Republicans, 58% Democrats, and 20% affiliated with other parties.

Ciatarelli had exceeded expectations in the 2021 race, coming within about three points of then-Governor Phil Murphy, which was roughly five points better than what was predicted at the time.

Currently, Sherrill holds a 4.1 percentage point lead according to the latest RCP aggregation, as the campaign enters its final two weeks.

Republicans initially hoped the favorable polling would be a good sign for Ciatarelli as Election Day approaches on November 4.