New Jersey: Democrat Phil Murphy Projected to Win Reelection After Fiercely Tight Race

After a fiercely tight race that crawled into Wednesday evening, Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is now projected to win reelection against Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli.

With 90 percent reporting, Murphy holds a slight lead over Ciattarelli by over 19,000 votes (50 percent to 49 percent). The New York Times reported:

Mr. Murphy held a slight lead over his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, with some votes left to be tallied, according to The Associated Press, which called the race on Wednesday after a protracted count. Most of the outstanding votes were in heavily Democratic areas of the state.

The delay in having the race called likely stemmed from a snafu out of Essex County, where a poll worker mistakenly shut off voting machines in 56 districts before the count had finished.

“A mistake by a poll worker led machines in 56 voting districts in Essex County, the state’s second-most populated region, to be turned off before their ballots were tallied, local election officials said,” reported the New York Post.

Beyond Essex County, Passaic County had similar voting issues in five districts that heavily leaned toward Murphy, which likely delayed the call into Wednesday. From NorthJersey:

Gov. Phil Murphy seems in position to gain a major boost in votes from Paterson from five election districts where ballots have not yet been counted.

Mayor Andre Sayegh attributed the uncounted Paterson districts to poll workers’ unfamiliarity with new voting machines. The mayor said election workers in the five districts accidentally locked the machines after the polls closed. Officials now must get a court order in order to unseal the machines to get access to the vote tallies, he said.

In the 63 Paterson districts that have reported numbers so far, Murphy had about 82.5% of the votes for governor, leading his GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli 8,493 to 1,692, according to unofficial tallies.

Despite Murphy’s projected victory, Democrats are fretting over how close Ciattarelli came to pulling off an upset in a race that had him down by 11 points just a week ago.

“We have sent a message to the entire country,” Mr. Ciattarelli told supporters on Wednesday. “This is what I love about this state, if you study its history: Every single time it’s gone too far off-track, the people of this state have pushed, pulled and prodded it right back to where it needs to be.”