The 2021 New Jersey gubernatorial election was held on November 2, 2021, to elect the governor of New Jersey. Incumbent Governor Phil Murphy was first elected in 2017 with 56% of the vote and won re-election to a second term. Murphy and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, defeated the Republican ticket of Jack Ciattarelli and Diane Allen, 51.2% to 48%.
Murphy formally announced his intention to run for a second term on October 1, 2020. Primaries were held on June 8, 2021. Murphy, who won the Democratic nomination unopposed after his two primary challengers were disqualified, faced Ciattarelli, Green nominee Madelyn Hoffman, Libertarian nominee Gregg Mele, and Socialist Workers Party nominee Joanne Kuniansky in the general election. The race was considered by many media outlets to be a "safe" or "likely" Democratic hold, as Murphy had led a majority of pre-election polls by double digits. However, Murphy defeated Ciattarelli by a much smaller margin than expected.
Murphy is the first Democratic governor of New Jersey to win re-election since Brendan Byrne in 1977, as well as the first candidate of the same party as the incumbent U.S. president to win since Thomas Kean in 1985. This is also the first New Jersey gubernatorial election since 2009 where both the Democratic and Republican nominees received more than one million votes each. It also was the first New Jersey gubernatorial election where the Green Party candidate placed third. Murphy also became the first Democrat to win a New Jersey gubernatorial election without carrying Gloucester and Cumberland Counties since Robert B. Meyner in 1953, and the first Democrat to win a gubernatorial election without carrying Atlantic County since Richard J. Hughes in 1961.
Atlantic County voted for the losing candidate for the first time since 1993. Also, this was the first New Jersey gubernatorial election in which Somerset County voted more Democratic than the state as a whole since 1910. Murphy became the first New Jersey Governor since Brendan Byrne to win both of his elections with a majority of the vote each time. It was the first single-digit Democratic win in a governor's election since 1961. Murphy received the most votes for a Democrat or any governor since 1989, and Ciattarelli received the most for a Republican since 2013. Despite failing to flip the state, Ciattarelli swung the state more Republican from the 2020 presidential election than Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for the concurrent Virginia gubernatorial election, did in his respective state even as he managed to flip the governorship. Ciattarelli also won three counties that Murphy won in 2017: Atlantic, Cumberland, and Gloucester.
On May 4, 2021, the New Jersey Globe published a list of nine potential candidates for lieutenant governor after speaking with "more than two dozen Republican leaders, strategists and activists." Diane Allen (who was selected as Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli's running mate) was one of the names on this list. The others were:
A second debate on NJ PBS featuring Ciattarelli and Singh and moderated by NJ Spotlight News reporters Briana Vannozzi, Colleen O'Dea, and David Cruz was planned for May 26, 2021, but later cancelled on May 24, 2021, after Singh announced that he would decline to participate.
Five candidates appeared on the general election ballot, the lowest number of candidates for a New Jersey gubernatorial election since 1953, which also featured five.
Although New Jersey State Law gives until September 1, 2021, for independent gubernatorial candidates to fundraise $490,000 to qualify for the debates, the invitees of the first debate were definitively stated at around July 20, 2021, which was over a month before the deadline. Despite the third-party candidates being ineligible to debate in any debates that were sponsored by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, the New Jersey Globe held another debate for third-party lieutenant governor candidates on October 11, 2021.
Phil Murphy vs. generic opponent<br />
During the election, several technical problems with internet connections were reported across the state after newly installed voting machines were used for the first time, resulting in machine malfunctions that were eventually resolved. This caused a delay in the final results. With 98% of the vote tallied, Ciattarelli conceded to Murphy at a news conference on November 12, 2021, and announced he would run again in 2025. This was the first time since 1949 that the winning gubernatorial candidate did not win a majority of counties, and the first since 1940 that a Democrat did so.
Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican
Murphy and Ciattarelli each won six of 12 congressional districts. Four districts won by Ciattarelli were represented by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Partisan clients<br />
Official campaign websites