What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

If you’re looking for an illustration of how dominant national political trends are these days, even in local elections, look no further than New Jersey’s 3rd Senate District. Republican Edward Durr, a truck driver who claims to have spent only $153 on the primary portion of his campaign, is on the verge of defeating Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney, one of the most powerful politicians in the state. How was this possible? Trump won Sweeney’s district by 2 points in 2020, and while Sweeney hasn’t had too much trouble garnering crossover votes here in the past, the current anti-Democratic political environment was likely too much for him to counter.

An addendum to my last post that’s interesting but doesn’t really change the overall takeaway: Dark-blue Essex and Hudson counties are two of the few counties that aren’t exhibiting about a 15-point swing toward Republicans since 2020. That suggests to me that the votes we do have there are Democratic-leaning mail ballots, while the uncounted votes are Republican-leaning Election Day votes. However, these areas are so blue that even Election Day votes should be good for Murphy. Reporting from NBC News’s Steve Kornacki seems to confirm this theory, too.

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.