New Jersey incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has seemingly won reelection to his post, narrowly defeating his Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli in a race that wasn’t decided until mid-Wednesday morning.
As of 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Murphy had collected 1,199,614 votes, or 49.94 percent of the total votes counted. Ciattarelli received 1,184,723 votes, which is about 49.32 percent.
Only 89 percent of the votes had been reported as of 1:00 p.m. However, all of the counties that Ciattarelli was leading in had reported 98 percent or more of their votes by that time. While most of the counties Murphy was winning had similar reporting numbers, Camden County, considered a Democratic stronghold, had only reported 88 percent of its votes.
Since most of the remaining votes were likely to go to Murphy rather than Ciattarelli, political pundits announced on Wednesday that Murphy was the winner, including the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman.
“I’ve seen enough: Gov. Phil Murphy (D) defeats Jack Ciattarelli (R) in the New Jersey governor’s race,” Wasserman wrote on Twitter at 10:23 a.m.
Turnout for the election was lower than it had been for the presidential race in the state last year, with around 2.4 million residents casting a ballot. In 2020, more than 4.5 million votes were counted — but turnout was still higher than the last gubernatorial election in 2017, when just over 2 million ballots were cast.
Though Murphy’s narrow win may be contested, the state won’t do so on its own. Because New Jersey does not have automatic recounts for close races, recounts come at the expense of whoever makes a request for one. That means if Ciattarelli wants to contest the outcome, he’ll have to pay for it out of his campaign coffers.
Along with the results of other races across the country, Murphy’s narrow win is being viewed as a warning sign for Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterm races next year, with many blaming party infighting in Washington, D.C., for Republicans faring well in New Jersey and Virginia.
“In the war between Democratic progressives and Democratic moderates, the Republicans won,” said former New York Democratic congressman Steve Israel.
If the numbers hold true, Murphy’s win will be the first time an incumbent Democratic governor has won reelection in New Jersey since 1977. Murphy is also the first governor from the same party as the president to win the state since 1985.
Democrats are hoping to achieve a similar feat in next year’s midterms. Generally speaking, a president’s party fares poorly and loses seats in the first midterm race of their new administration. Polling currently shows that a plurality of voters prefer Democrats to control Congress rather than Republicans after next year’s races, but only time will tell whether those numbers hold up over the next 12 months.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.