It’s looking increasingly likely that the New Jersey gubernatorial race is going to be the closest of the three elections BallotCast is tracking in 2025.
Between 2008 and 2020, New Jersey voted for the Democratic presidential candidate by double digits in every election. No Republican has won a gubernatorial race since 2013, and no Republican has won a Senate race since 1972. With this information, you’d think that Democrats would sweep the 2025 New Jersey elections, especially considering their historical advantage of being the opposition party during a presidential term.
However, things changed significantly in 2024. Kamala Harris only won the state by about six percentage points. This was one of the most shocking results of the year, and it showed that the politics of New Jersey is changing.
Coming back to this election in specific: Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a congresswoman, is considered favored to win, but throughout the past few months, she’s been gradually losing ground. According to our model, she has a 82%-18% chance of winning over Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman. She has a projected victory margin of 7.2 percentage points.
As of now, we expect Sherrill to pull off a victory, albeit by a much smaller margin than other Democrats in recent statewide races. We’ll have to continue tracking the polls to see if Ciattarelli gains more ground, but this is definitely shaping up to be a fairly close race.