By Matt Rooney
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I have a bit of grim news for our New Jersey Never Trumpers out there in the audience:
At the moment, Donald J. Trump is still outperforming Mitt Romney in New Jersey (2020 vs. 2012) by about half a point.
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Tuesday (11/10) is the last day that vote by mail ballots can be received (!) through the mail and counted. As of 7:51 a.m. this morning, President Trump trailed Joe Biden by 17.29-points with a grand total of 1,549,699 in his column.
Romney’s final margin of loss in New Jersey was 17.79-points (Pierre ended up with 1,477,568 votes).
Both men carried 7 N.J. counties. Romney won Morris County – where Trump is presently trailing – but Trump also carried rural Salem County which Mittens did not. It’s a reflection of how Trump did underperform with suburban voters this time around but also brought in other voters who don’t traditionally support Republican presidential candidates.
Trump *only* lost by 14.1-points in 2016, improving upon John McCain’s 15ish point margin of loss in 2008.
The coming provisional count could tighten the margin a bit further for POTUS. We’ll see.
The bottom line: yes, the GOP has a building suburban problem, and New Jersey is “the suburban state.” But as I’ve written many, many times, folks, this trend predates Donald Trump, and the Donald is at least bringing in some new voters (in places like lean-blue NJ-02) who have helped minimize the damage nationwide (hence why it’s so close in big, blue Rust Belt states after years of Republicans writing off places like Michigan).
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