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PictureThe state's first constitution, hurriedly drafted in 1776, provided that "all inhabitants" were able to vote, thus allowing women suffrage, with the above drawing published in 1864 titled "Women Voting in New Jersey Towards the Close of the Last Century.” Women later lost the vote, partly as a result of an election in 1807 to determine the site of a new court house to be located in either Newark or Elizabethtown (which was then in Essex County), in which opponents claimed there was an unusually large female turnout--with some women alleged to have voted multiple times dressed in different clothing. Subsequent legislation restricted the vote to free white males. Image: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, November 12, 1864

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--Overview    

       As of the election on November 8, 2022, New Jersey had 6,508,146 registered voters. with 2,531,417 registered as Democrats; 1,526,446 as Republicans; and 2,369,262 as unaffiliated, with the remainder declaring third-party membership. The largest registrations for third parties--all of which were below 20,000--were for the Libertarian Party; the Conservative Party; the US Constitution Party; and the Green Party. New Jersey's voter turnout of 76% of active registered voters in 2020 ranked 8th highest of all states, with Minnesota having the highest at 80%.

      In the 2020 presidential election, the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris received 57.3% of the total votes, defeating the Republican slate of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence which received 41.45% of the vote. The most controversial race in the state was Congressman Jeff Van Drew’s reelection against Democrat Amy Kennedy.  Van Drew was the former Democrat recruited by President Trump to the Republican Party when he wouldn’t vote to impeach the president. Van Drew justified his party switch by claiming the Democratic Party had become too extreme for him. In the 2022 mid-term election, Democrat Congressman Tom Malinowski was defeated for re-election by Republican Thomas H. Kean, Jr., thus changing the partisan composition of the House delegation to 9 Democrats and three Republicans (Kean, Van Drew and Christopher Smith).  A sharp Democratic swing occurred in the 2018 election, when five Republican seats were lost, shifting the previous balance of an evenly divided delegation with six Democrats and six Republicans. Democrats also hold both US Senate seats with Robert Menendez and Cory Booker. 

       In the 2016 presidential election, the Democratic ticket of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine received 55% of the votes to 41% for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. In 2012, President Barack Obama and Joseph Biden won New Jersey by a 17.7% margin over the Romney-Ryan ticket. 
         
       As of January 2021, Democrats hold majorities in both the 40-member state Senate (25-15) and the 80-seat General Assembly (52-28). 

​        Since the adoption of its current constitution in 1947, New Jersey has elected as governor five Republicans (Alfred Driscoll; William Cahill; Thomas Kean; Christine Todd Whitman; and Chris Christie) and seven Democrats (Robert Meyner; Richard Hughes; Brendan Byrne; James Florio; Jim McGreevey; Jon Corzine; and Phillip Murphy).

        In 2017, Democrat Philip Murphy was easily elected governor with 1,203,110 votes to the 899,583 cast for Republican Kim Guadagno, who had served as lieutenant governor under Governor Christie. In 2021, however, Murphy narrowly won re-election over Republican Jack Ciatterelli by a 51.2% to 48% margin, a result which surprised many analysts who had expected a more substantial Murphy victory. Murphy is the first Democratic governor of New Jersey to win re-election since Brendan Byrne in 1977.

       New Jersey has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, when Bill Clinton won a narrow victory over President George H.W. Bush.  In the 1988 election, however, then Vice President Bush easily defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis by a 56% to 43% margin, and in nine of the 11 prior elections going back to 1948 the Republican presidential nominee carried New Jersey.

       The most recent victory by a Republican in a US Senate race was in 1972, when Senator Clifford P. Case was re-elected; only Hawaii has a longer period of continuous Democratic senatorial election victories. (In 1982, Nicholas Brady was appointed by Republican Governor Thomas Kean to fill the remaining nine months of the unexpired term of Senator Harrison Williams following  Williams's resignation, but Brady did not seek election to a full term). 
       
       In 2018, New Jersey also made registering to vote easier by implementing automatic registration through enactment of a law creating a system that automatically registers people who are eligible to vote when they apply for a license, permit or identification card. The state also now allows  mail-in balloting without the need to declare any reason for not voting in person..

       New Jersey and Virginia are the only two states which hold gubernatorial elections in the year following the presidential election. Proponents argue that this scheduling allows candidates and voters to focus more on issues of state concern while others suggest that it results in lower overall voter turnouts.​
Source: NJ Spotlight
PictureWoodrow Wilson shown voting in Princeton Fire House in undetermined election. Image: Historical Society of Princeton
--Voter turnout
       
         New Jersey's voter turnout of 76% of active registered voters in 2020 ranked 8th highest of all states, with Minnesota having the highest at 80%. But most recent elections in non-presidential years, however, have seen historically low turnouts. In 2009, Republican Chris Christie defeated incumbent Governor Jon Corzine in an election that drew 47% of the state's registered voters and in 2013 Christie was re-elected with a turnout of only 40%; the percentage of registered voters casting ballots in both elections was the two lowest for gubernatorial elections in state history. In the 2014 election, when Senator Booker won his first full term and all 12 of the state's seats in the House of Representatives were on the ballot, only 36%  of New Jersey's registered voters cast votes--the lowest turnout for a regularly scheduled federal election in state history. In contrast, prior to 1998 no federal or gubernatorial election in New Jersey had ever drawn less than 50% of registered voters, with the peak turnout of 91% in the 1960 presidential election in which John F. Kennedy defeated Richard M. Nixon.    

       Analysts have cited several factors underlying the trend toward lower turnouts, including voter dissatisfaction with government; the lack of competition in congressional and legislative districts whose boundaries have been drawn to protect incumbents; and a belief that the dominance of money in campaigns and elections increasingly frustrates movements for policy reforms.​
​*  Federal Election Commission
*  Center for Public Integrity
*  Center for Responsive Politics
*  Project Vote Smart
*  New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission  
​
--Political parties

       The New Jersey Democratic State Committee and the New Jersey Republican State Committee are the dominant party organizations in the state. Other parties include the Libertarian and the Green Party of New Jersey. State committees are comprised of the chairs of each county committee, who elect a chair for the statewide organization. The state chair also serves as a member of the respective Democratic and Republican national committees based in Washington.  

       Governors typically control the appointments to and operations of the state committees during their time in office. The opposing party frequently may use the state committee, and the post of its chairperson, as the platform to advance its positions.    
*  New Jersey Republican State Committee
*  New Jersey State Democratic Committee
*  Green Party of New Jersey
*  New Jersey Libertarian Party
--Public Opinion Polls

       Various public opinion polls periodically survey opinions of New Jersey residents on elections and politics, as well as views on such topics as quality of life, the economy, health, the environment and leisure pursuits. The oldest continuing survey is that sponsored by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers--which was the nation’s first university-based state survey when it was established in 1971--but other more recently established polls also receive extensive coverage. Polls conducted by he Monmouth University Polling Institute, for example, which was originally established with a focus on New Jersey surveys, became a widely-cited source on national politics beyond New Jersey. During election campaigns, candidates with sufficient funding also often retain private polling firms to conduct unpublished polls to help advise them on strategy, themes, issues and constituencies.
*   Rutgers-Eagleton Poll
*   Monmouth University Polling Institute
*   PublicMind Poll, Fairleigh Dickinson University
*   Quinnipiac University Poll

--Media coverage
      
       For most of its history, the dominant source of information and opinions on New Jersey government and politics was provided by print newspapers. In the nineteenth century, newspapers often were founded as openly partisan forums to advance their publisher's policy views and to aggressively support favored candidates. Through most of the twentieth century, newspapers continued to play a disproportionate role in New Jersey, particularly due to the state's lack of major television broadcast outlet when voters in other states increasingly shifted to broadcast media for information on state government and politics.

       Editorial positions in a state where surveys showed a general lack of public knowledge of statewide issues also could be influential in shaping public opinion. Until it ceased publication in 1972, the opposition of the Newark News to a state income tax was widely viewed as a major reason for the failure of tax proposals advanced by both Governor Hughes and Governor Cahill. The Newark Star-Ledger, the successor to the Newark News as the state's leading newspaper, also became highly influential in setting the state's policy agenda and determining its leadership, such as its advocacy of development of the Hackensack Meadowlands and the New Jersey Sports Complex and its support of the income tax and the re-election of Governor Byrne in the 1977 election.

       Over the last two decades, the growth of electronic media and the decline of print newspaper circulation and advertising--with resulting newspaper closings, consolidations and staff layoffs--have led to a fragmentation of the sources of state political information and opinion. All traditional print newspapers have launched sister electronic Web sites, with NJ.com, the digital outlet of the Newhouse publishing empire through its Advance Media unit, emerging as the state's most visited site providing content from the Star-Ledger, the Trenton Times, the Jersey Journal and its other newspapers.  Web sites such as PolitickerNJ.com; PoliticoNew Jersey; and NJ Spotlight now regularly cover state and local political developments; and nonprofit sites including NJSpotlight, New Jersey Watchdog and New Jersey Policy Perspective cover news and also post studies and analysis of policy issues and options.         

*  PoliticoNewJersey
*  NJSpotlight.com
*  New Jersey Policy Perspective
*  New Jersey Globe
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