TRENTON, N.J. – The gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in New Jersey has now exceeded the 1 million mark. In fact, according to the latest data released by the state (as of July 6, 2020), the GOP has more registered voters than the Democrats and Unaffiliateds in only 4 of the state’s 21 counties.
Those counties are Cape May, Warren, Sussex and Hunterdon.
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Democrats also outnumber unaffiliated voters statewide:
Voter registration is of course only part of the story. Republicans continue to reliably win in a handful of counties – notably Ocean and Monmouth counties – despite trailing unaffiliated voters. Still, the Democrats’ overall advantage makes it challenging for Republicans to win a statewide contest like this year’s U.S. Senate contest or next year’s reelection battle with Governor Phil Murphy; when Chris Christie beat Jon Corzine in 2009, the Democrat voter registration edge was 300,000 voters smaller than it is today.
The story nationally is a bit more complicated.
After making steady gains before and following the 2018 midterm cycle, Democrats took a hit in key battleground states including Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and Pennsylvania during the spring months of the COVID-19 lockdown. Some of that reversal was cancelled out, however, when Democrats saw a surge in some states among young and black/brown voters in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
Voter turnout remains the single most important determinating factor for victory, and national Republicans think their ground game can carry the day.
“We have been building up our ground game for the past year. We have had people in all of these battleground states,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel opined Monday morning on Fox News. “We have the highest staff that we have ever had and we have activated over a million volunteers. And the Biden operation has not been existent. So, the second the pandemic hit, we went completely virtual, we haven’t lost a step and we’ve continue to do voter reg. And we have registered more voters already than we did in the entire 2016 cycle.”
