An apparent voter registration purge has further diminished the Democrats’ formidable voter registration edge over Republicans in the Garden State. This latest data dump should also help solidify New Jersey’s status as an emerging purple state.
The new data released Monday by the Division of Electiond (representing the state of play through February 2025) shows Democrats’ advantage shrinking by another almost 50,000 voters in the last month; the net drop versus Republicans of 49,253 registrants brings the Democrat surplus to 834,184 as compared to 883,437 voters at the beginning of February.
Republicans dropped from 1,652,061 voters to 1,614,140.
Democrats fell even harder, falling from 2,535,498 to 2,448,324.
Unaffiliateds went from 2,509,165 strong to 2,412,627.
The state is supposed to purge inactive voters but no rationale for the dramatic adjustments was immediately offered by the Division of Elections or the Secretary of State upon the release of the latest numbers.
Republicans have consistently chipped away at the Democrats’ margin since Joe Biden first became president back in early 2021 at which time there were over one million more Democrats than registered GOP voters. In November 2021, Jack Ciattarelli came up only 84,286 votes short of defeating Phil Murphy. Republicans just made up almost 60% of that margin in a single month and, cumulatively, have more than twice made up for their 2021 margin of loss with new net registrations over the past four years.
