Between the two gubernatorial elections on Tuesday, Virginia was supposed to be the lopsided one — and it was, with Democrat Abigail Spanberger crushing Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points.
But New Jersey looked like it was going to be a different story. The polling was competitive, and Republicans had nominated a battle-tested candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, who’d nearly won the governorship four years earlier. Recent momentum was on the GOP’s side, too, with President Donald Trump coming within 6 points of Kamala Harris there last year — a giant improvement from the 16-point Jersey drubbing he’d suffered in 2020. And Democrats were privately sharing alarm that their nominee, Mikie Sherrill, seemed to be wilting under the spotlight.
At the very least, this was going to be a close race, one that Republicans would be able to point to as proof that the national political climate wasn’t that bad for them. There was talk of New Jersey shifting away from blue bastion and into swing-state status. An outright Ciattarelli win didn’t feel out of reach.
But it was all a mirage. When the polls closed, the rout was on, and Sherrill walked away with a 13-point win, nearly matching Spanberger’s margin in Virginia.
It’s a concerning outcome for Republicans, because the two main ingredients in the Sherrill landslide have potential ramifications that extend well beyond the borders of New Jersey.
First, there are the well-to-do suburbs and bedroom communities. These are traditionally Republican areas populated with college-educated, white-collar professionals who are deeply uncomfortable with Trump. When he nearly won four years ago, Ciattarelli clawed back many of the suburban voters his party had been shedding in the Trump era. This time around, with Trump back in the White House, they were cross-pressured, but their verdict was decisive: They wanted to vote against the party of Trump.
Consider Hunterdon, Morris and Somerset counties, which have the highest median incomes and the highest concentrations of white residents with college degrees in New Jersey. In each one, Ciattarelli’s margin was 12 to 14 points worse than in his 2021 campaign. But his numbers in these counties were in line with Trump’s showing last year:
In fact, Ciattarelli fared worse than Trump in Morris, although some of this could be due to it being Sherrill’s home county.
But what about Ciattarelli’s home base of Somerset, where he was buried even worse than Trump? It demonstrates the motivation of anti-Trump suburbanites now that he’s back in office, and it suggests that further GOP erosion is possible — in New Jersey and in similar areas around the country.
Simply put, there were a lot of suburbanites who were comfortable with Ciattarelli when Trump was an ex-president but who look like they will shun anyone in the GOP column as long as he’s president.
The other ingredient in Sherrill’s win involves nonwhite voters. It was with these voters — Hispanic and Asian American voters in particular — that Trump made his biggest gains in 2024. These voters had not backed Republicans in the past, but Trump’s surprising inroads raised hope among Republicans — and trepidation among Democrats — that a broader shift might be underway, not just in New Jersey but nationally.
In this way, Ciattarelli was a test case: Could these Trump gains transfer to a non-Trump Republican running without Trump on the ballot?
The answer is a resounding no. In New Jersey municipalities that are at least 60% Hispanic (and where results are currently available), all of Trump’s 2024 gains were washed away Tuesday night:
Similar results can be seen in heavily Asian American areas in Middlesex County, where Trump also made notable gains last year.
Had Ciattarelli combined his suburban performance from 2021 with Trump’s 2024 inroads among nonwhite voters, Ciattarelli would have won. And if he could have retained at least some of both, the race would at least have been tight.
That would have given Republicans a nice post-election talking point, obviously, but it also would have been a genuine source of midterm optimism for them. It would have shown that the anti-Trump suburban passions were cooling and that partywide growth with nonwhite voters was continuing apace.
But Ciattarelli got neither. And as a result, he got clobbered.
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