New Jersey - 2024 Election Compendium

Topic: 2024 Election Analysis

New Jersey 2024 Presidential Election Review

Author’s Note: All 2024 Election Reviews can be found here.

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Outcome

Harris +5.9% (+252,498)

My Prediction

Harris by minimum of 8.0%

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Preface

New Jersey joined the “blue wall” along with neighbors Pennsylvania and Delaware (and many other states) in 1992 – and hasn’t looked back. While I do not believe Perot cost Bush 41 the presidency outright, I do believe he is the reason New Jersey didn’t hang around the GOP column until 1996. Any way you slice it, New Jersey had been a GOP presidential stronghold since Franklin Roosevelt’s political departure, backing 9 of 11 Republican presidential nominees from 1948 through 1988, and often by substantial margins of more than 20 points before changing sides 32 years ago.

Like its political cousin, New York, the Garden State began to show some interest in America First populism in 2016, moving from a 17.8% Democrat win (Obama) in 2012, to just 13.8% in 2016, a shift of four points toward Trump in a year that swung hard enough to the right to flip Pennsylvania. Despite Trump’s strong gain of 281,341 net new votes (the highest GOP gain in 16 years) in 2020, he lost the state by 15.9% in what I’ve consistently referred to as one of the filthiest state presidential elections of the 2020 race. That margin, with such a large gain for Trump in net votes in a state not growing relative to the rest of the country, could only be achieved by Biden adding 460,057 net new ballots over Clinton (taking advantage of the 2020 election environment and shortcuts) and blowing away any of Obama’s record totals from his two runs. Since 2020, New Jersey has been poised to return to rightward movement as evidenced by 18 of its 21 counties exhibiting a Republican registration shift, moving the Garden State more than 3 points to the right from its 2020 registration index of D+16.6%.

The party registration numbers, along with those present in New York and Pennsylvania, suggested a substantial working-class shift rightward was on the way – extending to working-class voters of all races and ethnicities. That is a critical point, because New Jersey is 48.1% non-white, including 21.6% Latino according to the last U.S. Census.

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Analysis

· Party registration shifts since 2020 (18 counties shifted toward the GOP) suggested Trump would improve in all but 3 counties. The party registration indicator went 18 for 21 in New Jersey, with Trump making gains in every county, including the three that shifted Democrat in registration (Hunterdon, Morris, and Somerset).

Author’s Note: Somerset County is the birthplace of my beloved late father, and the home of the valiant Defender of the Republic.

· Trump flipped 3 counties – Atlantic, Cumberland, Gloucester, Morris, and Passaic. Trump won Gloucester and Morris in 2016 and succeeded in pulling them back this year, but the wins in Atlantic and Cumberland were the first for a GOP presidential nominee since 1988, and the win of Passaic was the first such win since 1992.

· Passaic County symbolizes the Trump momentum shift better than any county in the northeast. It is made up of a population exceeding a half million, is just 38.8% white, with a population that is likely to be majority Hispanic by the next census. Trump won it by 2.9% after losing it by 22.3% in 2016, which represents an eight-year swing of 25.2%

· The recipe for flipping New Jersey is the same as it is in New York. Republican candidates must hold the gains made in outlying counties throughout the state while continuing to make headway in the areas adjacent to New York City – primarily the Democrat “Big 6” shown below, which lost one of its members to Trump:

· Referencing the graphic above, Trump cut 295,881 in margin out of the six Democrat strongholds adjacent to New York City, including Middlesex County, which I accurately pegged by party registration to be shifting Republican despite its large Asian population. This area includes core Newark (Essex County). These gains not only symbolize increased Trump strength, but also the likelihood that ballot trafficking was substantially relaxed compared to 2020, and perhaps discouraged thanks to the investigations into these activities in the Garden State. See Trump’s comparative gains in the outlying 15 counties below:

· Trump’s strong performance throughout the rest of New Jersey was girded by flipping back Gloucester and Morris Counties and running up the score in GOP strongholds like Monmouth, Ocean, and Sussex Counties. Continued progress of this sort will render New Jersey competitive at the presidential level as soon as 2028.

· Another huge tell that the 2020 election was unbelievably corrupt is that New Jersey certified 252,999 fewer votes than it did four years ago. Harris failed to reach Biden’s ballot county in a single county, and failed to reach Clinton’s ballot county in six, primarily within the New York City/Newark metro. This not only emphasizes Trump’s major gains, such as those evident in Passaic and Middlesex Counties, but the lack of a concentrated effort to defraud the returns with 2020-level industrial harvesting efforts used to artificially enhance urban turnout. Harris lagged Biden by 367,687 total ballots, or an astonishing 14.1%. See graphic below for Harris’s contrast with Biden and Clinton.

· In New York and New Jersey combined, Harris lagged Biden’s ballot count by 993,378 ballots. While not discounting Trump’s hard-fought gains in both states, this confirms I was most certainly correct about election fraud in the 2020 race, especially in the counties indicated below. It does not appear a concentrated effort was made to build on 2020’s manipulation efforts in 2024.

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Key Counties

Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, and Union Counties

With demographic trends finally beginning to favor Republicans, as evidenced by progress made with Latinos, Asians, and black men, it seems likely the outlying areas of New Jersey will continue to progress like Pennsylvania and New York’s have. This means any success in turning New Jersey into a state capable of producing GOP electoral votes will hinge on the progress made in the areas adjacent to New York City and Newark. The primary obstacle to this is Automatic Voter Registration, which keeps the rolls filled with ineligible entries that can then be defrauded by bad actors. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the FBI, which found the election fraud problems in New Jersey serious enough to warrant investigation rather than ignoring them, which is their usual course of action.

All efforts, given finite resources, must be focused on simultaneously investigating these NYC-adjacent areas for registration corruption and following up on known ballot trafficking rings such as those already exposed by investigations, while running a Pennsylvania-style GOTV and registration effort in the outlying counties, such as Ocean, Monmouth, Sussex, Morris, and Warren. Progress made in Middlesex and Passaic Counties must be nurtured, and with effort, can be developed for large margins such as those found in longstanding GOP strongholds along the Jersey Shore.

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Opportunities for Election Manipulation

Familiarize yourself with the grading criteria for my election ratings. Here is how New Jersey rates with regard to the most common election demerits, and its own unique traits:

· Voter ID – New Jersey does not require voters to show ID.

· Same Day Registration – Not authorized in New Jersey.

· Ballot Harvesting – New Jersey has strict laws about ballot harvesting, which led to significant investigations and criminal exposure in recent local races.

· Automatic Voter Registration – New Jersey operates Automatic Voter Registration.

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The Road Ahead

New Jersey has made my list of Top Ten Election Integrity Targets, joining the eight battlegrounds and Virginia on the list. Florida and Texas were more than twice as red as New Jersey was blue as a percentage, and removing these 14 electoral votes from future Democrat nominees would cripple their electoral college chances, especially if Republicans can figure out how to hold Georgia in future elections.

As I mentioned in my closing commentary for New York, the country club wing of the GOP must be allowed nowhere near the levers of decision-making power in New Jersey if we want these Trumpian trends to continue beyond the age of the man himself. When Obama went backward in 43 states in 2012, he gained in New Jersey and New York because Mitt Romney became the GOP standard bearer and sent all possible working-class gains back to the basement. Getting New Jersey to flip will require hard work to mitigate the negative impacts of Automatic Voter Registration and oppose any expansion of mail-in balloting.

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Final Grade and Closing Commentary

The Top 5 Election Integrity Targets in New York are (in no order):

· Bergen County

· Middlesex County

· Essex County

· Union County

· Hudson County

New Jersey receives a Grade of 2 – Marginal Concern – based on the corruption of its voter registration database guaranteed by the operation of Automatic Voter Registration, the statistical evidence that many of its most heavily populated counties were highly manipulated in the 2020 election, and by exceeding the maximum electoral vote count allowing a state to receive a Grade of 1.

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Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.