Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) is projected to win New Jersey’s gubernatorial election.

Decision Desk HQ made the call at 8:13 p.m. ET.

The Hill shared:

Sherrill, a fourth-term congresswoman representing a district in northern New Jersey, fended off a competitive challenge from Ciattarelli, who ran for governor for a third time after narrowly losing to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) in 2021. Murphy is term-limited and couldn’t run again.

The race turned increasingly competitive in recent weeks, with some polling showing the election as a toss-up, as both candidates grappled with crisscrossing political headwinds.

For Democrats, the state hadn’t elected a governor of the same party three times in a row since 1961, and its party was grappling with frustrations from voters over an affordability crisis at a time when Democrats controlled both the governor’s mansion and state Legislature.

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Republicans, meanwhile, were forced to contend with President Trump’s unpopularity in the state, even as the party has made gains in recent elections there. Murphy narrowly won four years ago, and former Vice President Kamala Harris only defeated President Trump in New Jersey by 6 points last year. Still, the current president has a disapproval rating of 51 percent, according to a recent survey from Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill. His low favorability forced Ciattarelli to walk a tightrope as the gubernatorial candidate sought to embrace the president while also seeking distance from him.

NewsNation has more:

Both candidates were evenly matched in campaign funding, making the contest a key test of voter sentiment less than a year into Donald Trump’s second term. New Jersey is one of several states where Trump gained considerable ground in 2024, improving on his 2020 vote share by about five percentage points.

Democrat Kamala Harris still carried the Garden State, but the roughly six-point margin was the narrowest for her party since 1992.

New Jersey voters have shown less consistency when it comes to the governor’s office. Republican Chris Christie served two terms from 2010 to 2018, followed by Murphy, a Democrat who has held the post since then.

For decades, the state tended to elect governors from the opposite party of the sitting president — a streak that ran from 1989 to 2017 before breaking in 2021 when Murphy was reelected during Joe Biden’s first year in office.

 

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