What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

Right now, Murphy leads Ciattarelli in the New Jersey governor’s race just 50 percent to 49 percent, but it’s been tough to know how to interpret that result since we don’t have reliable numbers about how many votes are outstanding and what type of ballots (Democratic-leaning mail votes or Republican-leaning Election Day votes) they are. But some back-of-the-napkin math I just did suggests that the uncounted vote should be disproportionately good for Murphy.

The table below shows each county in New Jersey, how it’s currently voting, and what its turnout rate is so far as a share of total votes cast in the 2020 presidential election. Of course, there’s no way that turnout in this off-year election was ever going to match 2020’s, but in a world where it’s extremely challenging to estimate expected voter turnout, 2020 at least provides a consistent turnout benchmark against which to measure the current results.

You’ll notice that several (mostly Republican-voting) counties are hovering around 60 percent of their 2020 turnout — and that several (mostly Democratic-voting) counties are still below 50 percent of 2020 turnout. That, in a nutshell, is why I think Murphy will pick up votes: If turnout reached 60 percent of 2020 levels in counties like Hunterdon and Ocean, it probably will at least approach 60 percent of 2020 levels in counties like Hudson and Essex when all is said and done. And given how strongly Democratic those two counties in particular are, it’s very likely that the uncounted votes there will break for Murphy.

Given how close the governor’s race in New Jersey is, we’ve calculated how the candidates are doing relative to 2020 presidential benchmarks. Murphy now leads by about 0.3 percentage points, which isn’t much, but you’d still probably rather be Murphy than Ciattarelli at this point. That’s because a couple of Democratic-leaning counties — Essex (Newark) and Mercer (Trenton) — still likely have a fair number of votes left to report, which should be good news for Murphy. Still, our benchmark analysis suggests Murphy is way outperforming what he needs from Hudson County, the second-bluest county in the state, after Essex. Murphy has a margin akin to Biden’s in 2020 there, even though he’s running behind Biden pretty much everywhere else. That raises questions about whether some of the remaining vote in Hudson might actually be friendlier to Ciattarelli than you’d expect in such a major Democratic-leaning county. But with a lack of clarity on what of the remaining vote is still left to count — many Democratic-leaning mail-in and early votes but also some Republican-leaning Election Day ballots, too — we can’t know with certainty how things will shift from here.

I wrote a little while ago about how Democrats had axed paid family leave as part of their big spending bill — well, it looks like that might not be the case anymore. Now there are reports that Democrats are adding four weeks of paid family and medical leave to their reconciliation bill. It’s possible that the timing is coincidental, but it’s really interesting to think about this move in the context of their loss in Virginia last night, and the role of education and parental anger in that race. Is this an attempt to show parents who are running on fumes after 20 months of unpredictable-to-nonexistent childcare that Democrats are there for them? A way to prevent some of the clear frustration that parents are feeling from backfiring against them again? If that’s the case, I’m not sure that four weeks of paid leave will do the trick — but it’s interesting to think about the political chess here.