Wed. Nov 6th, 2024

Kamala Harris was leading in polls in New Jersey, which hasn’t supported a GOP presidential candidate since 1988. (Photo by Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)

Vice President Kamala Harris has won New Jersey in her bid to become president, the Associated Press says, an unsurprising victory in a left-leaning state where the Democrat has dominated polls in the three months since she replaced President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential race.

Harris now has New Jersey’s 14 electoral votes, with 270 required to win the White House, after beating former President Donald Trump, a Republican, on his home turf. The AP called New Jersey for Harris not long after polls closed at 8 p.m.

Her triumph here comes even though she and her running mate Tim Walz did not campaign in the Garden State, aside from chatting up local officials when Harris landed at the Trenton-Mercer Airport last month on her way to a Pennsylvania rally. Trump campaigned in Wildwood in May and at his golf club in Bedminster in August. He told an NBC reporter last weekend that he thought he might win New Jersey. Both candidates campaigned Monday in Pennsylvania, a swing state where polls showed them tied among voters.

But Harris prevailing in New Jersey was little surprise, considering Democrats outnumber Republicans in 13 of 21 counties here, with 906,000 more Democrats registered statewide than Republicans, of 6,727,538 total registered voters, the latest state data shows.

No GOP presidential candidate has won New Jersey since 1988, when George H.W. Bush won his White House bid against Democrat Michael Dukakis. Biden carried the state in 2020, snagging 57.3% percent of almost 4.5 million votes cast; Hillary Clinton claimed New Jersey, though not the nation, in 2016, with 55% of almost 3.9 million votes cast; and Barack Obama won here in 2012, with 58.2% of about 3.6 million votes cast.

Election results, even in New Jersey, will probably not be final for days, with early voting and mail-in votes to be tallied along with ballots cast on Election Day. This was New Jersey’s first presidential election since early in-person voting began in 2021, and more than 1.8 million voters cast their ballots early in person over the nine-day early voting period, according to the AP. Democrats led in both early and mail-in voting in New Jersey, data shows.

If he loses, Trump has said he would challenge the election results, and a recent CNN poll showed voters expect he won’t concede. The formal certification of election results doesn’t occur until January.

A Rutgers-Eagleton poll released last week generally showed Democrats up and down the ballot with comfortable leads, with 55% of those polled saying they would vote — or already had voted — for Harris.

Harris, an attorney and former U.S. senator and California state attorney general, was the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected as U.S. vice president. Her vice presidential pick and running mate, Tim Walz, is Minnesota’s governor and a former high school social studies teacher and football coach.

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