New Jersey’s governor’s race was still too close to call early Wednesday morning, with underdog Jack Ciattarelli holding a 1,200-vote lead over incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy with 98% of the ballots counted.
Murphy is seeking a second term as governor of the Garden State, running against Ciattarelli, a former state legislator and businessman. Should Murphy win reelection, he would become the first incumbent Democrat to win a second term as governor since 1977. As of early Wednesday morning, NJ.com reported Ciattarelli narrowly ahead 49.7% to 49.6%, but the outstanding vote was believed to be from Democratic strongholds.
“We’re going to wait for every vote to be counted,” Murphy told supporters shortly after midnight.
Ciattarelli told supporters early Wednesday morning that he believes soon he will “unequivocally declare victory.”
Although the race was too close to call, early vote totals showed Ciattarelli outperforming expectations, although results in some of the state’s more blue counties remained outstanding.
During the campaign, Murphy sought to draw comparisons between Ciattarelli and former President Donald Trump, quipping that his rival might be better suited as governor of a state like Florida or Texas. Ciattarelli sought to highlight issues specific to New Jersey, drawing attention away from national politics. But so many local issues, like mask mandates in schools, have national implications, leaving Ciattarelli with little wiggle room to make that case.
Murphy consistently polled ahead of Ciattarelli, but the Republican nominee slightly narrowed the gap in the final weeks of the race: A Monmouth University poll released last week found Murphy leading Ciattarelli 51% to 40% among likely voters, showing that Ciattarelli made strides with voters since August, when the same poll found him trailing Murphy by 17 percentage points.
Murphy, who said he ran his campaign for governor “like I’m 10 points behind,” brought in some of the nation’s most prominent Democrats for support in the final weeks of the race, including President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, signaling the party saw the race as too close for comfort. Biden even traveled to New Jersey to campaign for Murphy as negotiations over his social spending package continued in Congress.
Murphy ran as Biden’s popularity sunk even in reliably blue New Jersey: The president has a 43% approval rating in the same Monmouth poll, lower than his disapproval rating of 49%.
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The most recent Monmouth poll found that voters’ priorities shifted in the last months of the campaign: In August, most voters listed the pandemic and taxes as their biggest concerns, but voters did not have a clear top priority in the final poll. When combined, tax-related issues topped their concerns at about 27%, followed by jobs and the economy (20%), schools and education (16%), the pandemic (15%), crime (7%), abortion (5%), and transportation infrastructure (4%).
Polls showed Ciattarelli had an advantage with voters concerned about taxes. He centered his argument on how New Jersey residents pay the highest property tax bills in the country, which can drive residents out of the state. Last year marked the third consecutive year New Jersey was ranked the top state for outbound moves, according to the National Migration Study by United Van Lines.
