Republicans in New Jersey are taking a shrinking gap in voter registration numbers as a sign they’ll come out on top in November’s gubernatorial election despite the state’s history as a Democratic stronghold.
Four years ago, Democrats had a lead of more than 1 million registered voters over Republicans, according to the state’s voter registration statistics archive. At the start of March, that lead had narrowed to just over 800,000. While Democrats are still ahead, Republicans are optimistic that their party’s momentum will continue and help them come out victorious.
“That’s not some blip on the radar or not some anomaly,” Chris Russell, a GOP strategist in New Jersey, told NOTUS of the shrinking gap. “There’s also a ton of energy on the ground here that didn’t exist prior, and I think that’s because people now believe a victory is possible.”
The off-year election will provide an early test of how President Donald Trump’s party fares during his second term. Republicans nationally say they expect to fare well in 2026. New Jersey Republicans said they are confident this year’s gubernatorial race will break the historical trend of off-year elections that check the power of the president’s party.
Registration numbers in the state have shifted in Republicans’ favor. From March 2021 to this month, Republicans saw a net gain of more than 150,000 registered voters, while Democrats lost more than 90,000 registered voters.
The Republican gains aren’t confined to the state’s redder areas, like Ocean or Sussex counties, nor are they driven solely by counties that saw the largest rightward shifts in the 2024 presidential election, like Passaic and Hudson counties. The trend has been prevalent across the state, said Micah Rasmussen, who heads the Rebovich Center for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
Rasmussen said the narrowing gap is “pretty much across the board, which is what you would want to see” if you were a New Jersey Republican.
The state is well positioned for a Republican campaign to push it over the line. In 2024, every county in New Jersey moved at least two percentage points toward Trump as compared to the 2020 election. When it comes to the governor’s race, the party is drawing hope from this rightward shift — and from the last governor’s race, where Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli lost by less than four percentage points.
Scott Presler, a conservative activist who peddles right-wing conspiracy theories and has claimed credit for President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory in Pennsylvania, is making New Jersey his newest voter registration target.
Presler’s Early Vote Action has run door-knocking efforts in multiple swing states. At the beginning of March, Early Vote Action posted on X that “New Jersey is in play.” Presler also posted earlier this week that he’s held events in 10 New Jersey counties.
Early Vote Action did not respond to questions from NOTUS about its plans in New Jersey.
Russell cautioned that Republican success in November would hinge on actual turnout, not just registration numbers. But Presler is the type of figure who can bridge that gap, Russell told NOTUS.
Presler has a “proven track record of success in places like Pennsylvania, which a lot of us here in New Jersey know well,” Russell said. “Enthusiasm begets action, right? So people are excited, they take action. If they take action, it results in better registration numbers, better turnout, more heightened awareness of the election.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to reverse the rightward shift that the state saw in November. They have emerged with their own registration efforts, including the Million Voters Project targeting working-class voters across the state. Though the Million Voters Project is branded as nonpartisan, it’s backed by multiple progressive groups.
Democratic strategists and party members told NOTUS in November the party had a problem and that party members’ focus in the following months would be on fixing their messaging and outreach to voters.
Maggie Savoca, a leader for the progressive group Indivisible One New Jersey, said that lagging registration numbers are a sign that Democrats are losing momentum in the state.
But she said she’s confident that if Democrats focus on the effects the Trump administration’s policies are having on voters of all affiliations — and target voters who are registered as unaffiliated — they can counter the shrinking gap.
“Every place you go, if you talk about any issue … people assume that you’re either Republican or Democratic, but at the end of the day, what counts is who shows up and votes for who,” she said.
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Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.