New Jersey might be a swing state now

Normally a reliable blue bastion in federal elections, New Jersey surprisingly put up swing state numbers on Tuesday, coming the closest it has in a generation to casting its electoral votes for a Republican president.

Vice President Kamala Harris still won the state over Donald Trump, but the former president gained major ground in New Jersey. Having lost the state by double digits in 2016 and 2020, Trump closed election night down just five points — the closest presidential showing for a Republican since George H.W. Bush lost by 2.4 points in 1992. Tuesday night's margin is more striking considering registered Democratic voters in New Jersey grew threefold over Republicans since then and now have a 900,000 voter advantage.

Trump rallied in South Jersey and suggested throughout the campaign it would be competitive statewide, saying as recently as last weekend “a little birdie” told him he was leading Harris in the state.

Trump’s comeback was widespread — not only tearing down the Blue Wall and recapturing Sun Belt states, but also making gains in Democratic-leaning New York and deep-blue Massachusetts.

But few places turned as far to the right as New Jersey, though the bottom-line results don’t make it evident. Republicans and Democrats alike looked agape at the numbers.

“We had a beautiful day yesterday,” said Jose Arango, the Republican Party chair of urban Hudson County — a deeply Democratic stronghold with a 41 percent Hispanic population.

Hudson County, though still Democratic, appears to have shifted from 26 percent for Trump in 2020 to about 35 percent this year. Neighboring Passaic County, traditionally Democratic and also with a large Hispanic population, was actually carried by Trump. Both counties contributed to a far closer than expected House race in the long-Democratic 9th District, where Democrat Nellie Pou won by just 4 points over Republican Billy Prempeh — who lost by 34 points in 2020 (before redistricting).

“We certainly saw a wave, a red wave, around the country last night,” Pou said in an interview. “When you think about it, when I started this campaign nine weeks ago after the unfortunate death of [former Democratic Rep.] Bill Pascrell Jr., I knew it was going to be a challenge to put together a campaign so fast.”

Passaic also has one of the largest Arab American populations in the country and members of that community expressed frustration last year with the staunch support for Israel by its former representative, the late Pascrell Jr. It wasn’t clear whether Arab American voters mobilized Tuesday for Prempeh or against Pou, the handpicked successor to Pascrell.

"I think people are at a point where they're willing to use any means electorally to get their voice out. I think this election showed that,” said Ali Aljarrah, senior adviser and state lead for the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action New Jersey. “It's not exclusive to the Arab or Muslim community. We see the Hispanic community even in Hudson County go rightwards."

Arango said that working-class Hispanics in Hudson County, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, are suffering from high rent and high prices, even as many of its neighborhoods have become thriving and well-to-do New York City bedroom communities. New Jersey as a whole, he and other Republicans noted, is an expensive state with some of the highest taxes in the country. A Fox News exit poll showed 56 percent of New Jersey voters who favored Trump said the economy and jobs were their top issue.

“The Democratic Party talks about helping the poor, but if you talk about Hudson County, it’s segregated and the working class, and the liberal enclaves are basically the people who are supporting Wall Street in the places they can’t afford the rent. There’s no affordable housing,” said Arango, who was born in Cuba and grew up in Spain. “All that together, it was like a hurricane.”

Despite the close margin and some Republican victories at the local level, Democrats managed to hold onto all nine of their House seats and a U.S. Senate seat, which hasn’t gone Republican in 52 years.

“This is a symbolic victory. I don’t think any offices go along with symbolic victories for Republicans by cutting it close in New Jersey,” said Democratic strategist Dan Bryan. “That said, Democrats need to take this extremely seriously by looking at whether this is an individual one-off or if there is something deeper and more systematic.”

(Bob Hugin, the Republican State Chair, noted that Democrats won the redistricting process in 2021 and locked in a map that helped preserve most of their incumbents).

And as shocking as the rightward shift is in the state, it’s not without recent precedent. In 2021, when Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was at the top of the ticket, he carried the state by just three points over Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli. Republicans also gained six seats in the Legislature that year, with barely-funded truck driver Ed Durr famously ousting Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney.

“I think you saw the beginnings of this in ‘21. There’s a frustration by voters in New Jersey on economic stuff, on crime issues, and I also think there’s an underbelly in the stuff Trump tapped into culturally,” said Republican strategist Chris Russell, who advises Ciattarelli, who’s running again in 2025. “People are tired of being told they’re bad people, racists, bigots or Nazis — all these crazy aspersions that are cast on people who support Trump or things that he believes."

Murphy on Wednesday offered a sober reflection of the possible impacts that the 2021 contest he narrowly won. “In some respects, our reelection might have been the canary in the coal mine,” Murphy said at a press conference.

Most Democrats didn’t fear those results would be repeated in federal elections, since New Jerseyans have long been willing to elect Republicans to state-level offices and the election took place before the pandemic had faded. Indeed, Democrats in New Jersey lost just one House seat the following year and reclaimed all their legislative losses in 2023.

Durr, the truck driver who defeated Sweeney, lost reelection in 2023. Now he’s running for governor in 2025. “It mirrors what happened this year,” Durr said of the 2021 election. “It mirrors what has been taking place in the federal policies by [President Joe] Biden and Harris with ignoring things and worrying more about Zelenskyy’s border in Ukraine rather than our own border and illegals.”

For Democrats — 2021’s close gubernatorial election notwithstanding — New Jersey has a history of electing governors from the opposite party of the last national presidential winner. But Republicans can look at the presidential margin and see evidence that Black and Hispanic voters long out of their reach are listening to their message.

Atlantic County, which runs along the Jersey Shore and includes Atlantic City, voted for a Republican in a presidential race for the first time in decades. Michael Suleiman, the county’s Democratic Party chair, said that while Democrats have made inroads with white, college-educated voters, they are leaving behind those without advanced degrees and communities of color.

“Our messaging needs to resonate with them,” he said in an interview. “We can't just have messaging that resonates with the affluent, elite liberals, quite frankly.” He also wondered if Democrats have taken Black voters for granted. “We need to earn it.”