NJ in-person voting shows GOP uptick over 2021 — as voters turn out in droves for close governor’s race
New Jersey Republicans notched a more competitive in-person voting turnout so far relative to 2021, but are still lagging behind overall in their early vote position compared to four years ago thanks to their big deficit with mail-in ballots, new data shows.
On Saturday, the first of nine days of early voting in New Jersey, Democrats eked out a higher in-person voter turnout than Republicans, 42% to 39%, while 19% were affiliated with another party.
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Dems clinched an overall raw in-person vote advantage of 2,527, according to data compiled by Michael Pruser, DecisionDeskHQ’s director of Data Science.
But that’s less than the roughly 12 point (44% to 32%) or raw 26,717 in-person voting advantage Dems had when the dust settled on in-person voting in 2021.
Still, the figure only worsens the massive voter turnout gap Republicans face when factoring in mail-in ballots.
“This was the first of nine days of in-person, early voting. An eternity is still outstanding,” Micah Rasmussen, Director of the Rebovich Institute for NJ Politics at Rider University, observed.
“But, if the GOP cannot get any traction on the Dems, then they will go into Election Day with a 275,000-vote hole.”
The data only indicates voter party affiliation, and does not say whether New Jerseyans who have already cast their ballots backed Republican Jack Ciattarelli or Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ).
Still, the trajectory looks bleak for Republicans overall, at least so far.
Heading into in-person voting, which lasts until Sunday of next week, New Jersey Republicans had a dramatic deficit against Democrats with mail-in ballots.
Of the nearly 550,000 voters who have cast ballots so far, either through mail-in ballots or early in-person voting, 60% were Democrats, 24% were Republicans, and 16% had another affiliation.
By the end of the 2021 race, over 780,000 Garden Staters voted early in-person or via mail-in ballots, 22% of whom were Republicans, 58% were Democrats and 20% had a different party affiliation.
Ciattarelli had dramatically overperformed expectations in the 2021 off-year race, coming within about 3 percentage points of then-incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy (D).
His performance was about five percentage points higher than projected in the RealClearPolitics aggregate.
Sherrill has a 4.1 percentage point edge in the latest RCP aggregate with less than two weeks left in the campaign.
Republicans had been hoping closer-than-expected polls would bode well for Ciattarelli heading into Election Day, which is Nov. 4.
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