Do Republicans have a shot at New Jersey?

Learning from 2024's big shift

My 2024 after-action review takes a detour outside last year’s battleground to cover a big shift in a place that will also feature prominently in 2025’s off-year elections: New Jersey.

For this analysis, I’m debuting 16 precinct-level micro-communities that will help tell the story of the 2024 swing and the 2025 Governor’s race.

The basic presidential after-action review is available to all subscribers. As always, full charts and coverage of statewide races, specifically the Governor’s race, are included below the free preview for paid subscribers.

New Jersey’s Political Geography and the 2024 Shift

• New Jersey swung 10 points to the right, taking it to the edge of battleground status, with a margin of 5.9 points for Harris. New Jersey was nearly as close as battleground Arizona, which went for Trump by 5.5 points.

• The shift was higher across the board in the very populous New York City suburbs of Northern New Jersey. Every demographic group swung in the New York metro swung, even very wealthy areas.

• Within the state and Northern New Jersey, Realignment voting patterns drove the swing. The Hispanic swing here was stronger than the Rio Grande Valley and Miami-Dade County in 2020, moving 28 points to Trump. Hispanic precincts in Paterson shifted 39 points and in Passaic, 34 points. A 60-point gap in these areas in 2016 shrunk to just 20 points in 2024, just three points off of the Harris +17 margin in wealthy Northern New Jersey suburbs.

• Black-majority North Jersey precincts, concentrated in Newark and Jersey City, swung 13 points. This represents a near-doubling of the Trump vote share from 2020. Asian-heavy precincts across the river from the city swung 13 points, with the gap shrinking from Biden +28 to Harris +15.

• Majority-white suburbs in Northern New Jersey outvote majority-minority areas as a share of the state’s vote by 31 to 13 percent. But here too the gains were broad-reaching, ranging from an 11-point shift in the middle class North Jersey suburbs (15%) of the vote to a 7-point shift in the well-off North Jersey suburbs (12% of the vote). This latter group is the largest wealthy voting bloc of any state analyzed so far, with 71% with Bachelor’s degrees and 40% with incomes over $200,000. Finally, there are the Italian North Jersey suburbs, also 50%+ college educated and wealthier than the middle class suburbs. They swung 8 points—but they’re distinguished from both the wealthy and middle class suburbs by the fact that they vote more Republican to begin with: Trump +13 in 2024 compared to Harris +8 in the middle class suburbs and Harris +17 in the wealthy suburbs. This difference showcases how ethnic whites (who are not necessarily working class) really are the core of the Republican base in New Jersey.

• But… many of the gains in wealthy and Italian areas were just a snapback from poor 2020 results, when these areas swung 6 and 7 points to Biden respectively. There is clearer momentum in the middle class suburbs, with a 9 point total swing from 2016.

• The rest of the state is classified as follows: GOP strongholds in the mountains, coastal areas, and southern parts of the state at 33% of the vote, 10% in the central Jersey suburbs, 9% in a group of South Jersey suburbs, and 4% majority Black and Hispanic areas in the rest of the state.

• Existing Republican-voting areas did not swing as strongly—likely due to ceiling effects, but recent trends were stronger in coastal areas like Monmouth and Ocean Counties with an 8 point swing. By contrast, the northwestern mountains came in with a 5-point swing and southern New Jersey with a 4.5 point swing.

• Coastal areas stand out as a bulwark for Republicans, going for Trump by 24 points, versus an 18 point margin in the mountains and 14 points in southern New Jersey.

• What differentiates the Republican-voting areas in New Jersey are large white ethnic¹ populations (at least 27%, ranging up to 35% in Italian North Jersey, vs. a statewide average of 15%) and more people born in state (between 59-64%, vs. a statewide average of 52%).

• Over a longer time horizon, 2016 to 2024, Republicans have gained support in coastal and southern base areas but lost it in the mountains.

• Central Jersey’s patchwork suburbs tell a different story. Indian New Jersey, 3% of the statewide vote, swung 14 points to Trump—a striking shift against the first South Asian presidential nominee. Elsewhere, shifts were lower than they were in the north: middle-class zones swung 7 points, white working-class stretches near Trenton and Philadelphia shifted 5 points, and redoubts of the highly educated by Princeton barely moved at 2. The relative underperformance in working class relative to middle class areas might be a function of geography: the working class areas are Philadelphia-facing, while the middle class ones are more New York-facing.

• Advertising effects might explain the divide. Counties in the New York media market swung 11.8 points, while the much smaller Philadelphia media market swung 5.9 points. Philly’s airwaves were saturated with presidential ads, holding down swings, much like the rest of the swing states, while New York’s viewers saw little beyond national advertising. These differences don’t seem to fall exactly along the borders of the media markets, but I’ve included a map so you can judge for yourself.

• South Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs, dubbed Norcross Country after the indicted Democratic political boss George Norcross, cast 9% of the state’s vote. They held steady, shifting just 2.6 points in 2024 and falling short of Trump’s 2016 mark. Democrats kept a firm D+20 edge here, unlike the tighter races in Northern middle-class burbs. These suburbs seem uniquely resistant to Republicans both nationally and at the state level.