Election Shocker: New Jersey Governor Race Too Close to Call, Recount Likely

While all eyes were focused on Virginia, where a competitive race had been shaping up for weeks, New Jersey was quietly simmering in the background. On Tuesday night, the race broke open and Republican Jack Ciattarelli is currently leading the race by around 1,000 votes as of this morning. These numbers are subject to change, and the race will not be decided for days as all remaining ballots need to be counted. Democratic incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy looks to be still in a position where he could win, but the results are nothing that anyone expected.

At the time of writing, the race looks like this as of 8 am ET Wednesday morning:

For updated numbers, Politico offers a nice results page.

It’s going to take days of counting and canvassing to truly decide the winner in New Jersey, and the race still remains a pure toss-up:

New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and Republican Jack Ciattarelli were virtually deadlocked early Wednesday after a campaign centered on the incumbent’s progressive policies and handling of the pandemic.

The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the race as votes from Tuesday’s election were still being tallied on a night that imparted some bad omens for Democrats. Incomplete returns showed Ciattarelli and the first-term governor were separated by about 1,200 votes out of more than 2.3 million cast.

Murphy had been leading in the polls, has a 1 million-voter registration advantage and had more cash in his campaign coffers than Ciattarelli in the final days of the race. But the Republican has far surpassed the Republican nominee from four years ago in fundraising and has seen the gap in public polls move in his favor — if only by a few points.

A recount could be likely in the coming days after the initial vote count comes in. The recount is not automatic, a campaign would have to request it, but with a vote difference this small, it seems likely:

New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates are permitted to request one. The party that wants a recount has to file a suit in State Superior Court in the counties where they want to contest tallies. That has to be done within 17 days of Election Day.

So what’s the holdup? It looks like there are still a number of mail-in and absentee ballots to count, as would be expected:

Incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly trailed Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli heading into Wednesday morning with ballots — many of them vote-by-mail — in Democratic-rich areas yet to be counted.

In addition to the uncounted ballots, there were also about 700,000 early and mail-in votes to tally.

As some have mentioned, Murphy is still likely positioned to win, but not necessarily. Mail-in ballots tend to skew heavily Democratic so he may be in the best position with the race essentially tied right now. The question is how many ballots remain outstanding and from which part of the state.