New Jersey may be emerging as the marquee venue in November’s elections, with fresh indications that Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli has a real chance to defy the state’s partisan bent and off-year voting history.
An Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill poll last week put Ciattarelli in a 43%-43% tie with Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee. Sherrill has found herself trying to fend off controversy related to her military records and faces potential fallout from a Ciattarelli ad that shows video of her struggling to respond to a seemingly mundane question in an interview.
That said, New Jersey remains a blue state. Other recent public surveys still show Sherrill in the lead. And in governors' races, New Jersey voters have also exhibited a pronounced tendency to side against the party that controls the White House.
That presents significant obstacles for Ciattarelli, especially with the Emerson poll giving President Donald Trump a 41% approval rating in the state. But the unpopularity of the Democrats who run Trenton may give him the means to offset that. In the same poll, outgoing Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s approval rating is just 35%.
The prospect of pulling off an upset win is tantalizing for Republicans after the strides they’ve made in recent statewide contests. In 2020, Joe Biden crushed Trump by 16 points in New Jersey. But the following year, Ciattarelli fell just 3 points short when he challenged Murphy. And last year, Trump lost to Kamala Harris by 6 points — one of his biggest improvements anywhere in the country.
What’s notable in looking at those past races is that the gains Trump made last year don’t overlap that much with those that Ciattarelli made in 2021. Instead, each attained surprising levels of support in areas where the other struggled.
If we look at each municipality in the state and use Trump’s 2020 drubbing as a baseline, we find that there are 117 municipalities where Ciattarelli in 2021 improved off that performance by at least 10 points more than Trump did last year. Those municipalities tend to be more white, wealthy and college-educated than New Jersey as whole.
Conversely, we also find 59 municipalities where Trump’s 2024 improvement off that 2020 baseline was at least 10 points better than Ciattarelli’s in 2021. These places tend to be more densely populated, diverse and blue-collar.
An example of the type of place where Ciattarelli most outperformed Trump would be Chatham Township, a New York City commuter suburb of about 10,000. It is chock full of white college-educated adults, a group that Trump has struggled with since his first campaign. Trump lost Chatham by 19 points in 2020 and 15 last year. But Ciattarelli outright won it in 2021, besting Murphy by two points.
Clearly, Ciattarelli was able to win over a large number of white, college-educated voters who are allergic to Trump. But it’s worth recalling that he did that when Trump was no longer president. Now that Trump is back in office, will those same voters be as available to Ciattarelli? Or will they stay away from the GOP as a way of expressing their displeasure with Trump?
On the other end of the scale, Union City represents the type of municipality where Trump most outperformed Ciattarelli. Not far from the Hudson River and New York City, it is 82% Hispanic and a longtime Democratic bastion. In 2020, Trump lost it by 45 points, and in 2021, Ciattarelli was crushed by 70. But last year, Trump whittled the Democratic edge all the way down to 17 points.
Trump’s Union City success was part of the broader national gains he made among Hispanic voters in 2024 — many of them younger first-time voters or voters who tend not to participate in nonpresidential elections. It’s questionable how much, if any, of that success is replicable for a non-Trump Republican running in an off-year election.
Obviously, Ciattarelli was close to victory in his last campaign. But he needs more. A key question is whether he can derive at least some benefit from Trump in places like Union City — without also losing ground in places like Chatham because of Trump.
