Is New Jersey the Sleeper Election of 2023?

Don't Sleep on New Jersey

I know my readers are probably tired of reading about elections. We just got past the midterms and only a few states are holding elections this year so this is not going to matter to most of you but it’s the world I live in, so I need to write about it.

New Jersey is an interesting state. Once reliably Republican in every presidential election from 1968 to 1988 and blue ever since. Unlike most states in the Northeast, the state’s voter registration is beginning to shift in a back towards Republicans.

In November 2020, Democrats had 1 million more registered voters than Republicans, 2.531 million Democrats to 1.526 million Republicans. This was up significantly for Democrats from just four years earlier when they led the GOP by 800,000 voters and a world different from when Chris Christie won the governorship in 2009. That year the Democrats led Republicans by only 600,000 voters.

It had seemed like the Garden State was basically gone for good.

Then the strangest thing happened, Republicans began out registering new voters more than Democrats over the last two years. The hard numbers are even more startling when you look at how much fortunes have reversed.