For more than 40 years, New Jersey’s Democratic governors have not managed to win a second term. Moreover, the gubernatorial elections in the state always come in the year after a presidential election, and not since the Reagan administration has the state elected a governor the same party as the new president.
But on November 2, Governor Phil Murphy beat all the odds.
The results of the election were slow in being reported. In fact, here were so many election day irregularities that before the polls closed the League of Women Voters made an emergency petition to the courts to extend the voting period from 8pm to 9:30pm to give people a chance to vote. The request was denied.
The problems piled up. In Paterson there were difficulties with new machines, causing five districts to be unable to count their votes because the workers accidentally locked the machines and needed a court order to be allowed to open them. In Essex County 56 districts in the highly blue area around Newark, weren’t counted due to “poll worker error.” Again, only court orders could resolve the issue.
New Jersey’s vote count took days and many of the places where votes were slow to be counted were in heavily Democratic areas, making it look like Murphy might be losing the fight against Republican Jack Ciatterelli. In the end, Murphy won by almost 70,000 votes.