Politics in New Jersey State are very diverse and complex. The state is divided into 21 counties, with each having its own local government and political party affiliation. On the state level, there are two major parties represented: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The governor of New Jersey is a Democrat and many state legislators are either Democrats or Republicans as well. The New Jersey Senate consists of 40 members elected from districts throughout the state, while the Assembly consists of 80 representatives that are elected from districts in each county. In addition to electing their representatives, New Jersey residents can engage in politics by attending town hall meetings with their local representatives where they can voice their opinions on important issues, joining political action groups, and getting involved in local campaigns to support their favorite candidates.
The political climate in New Jersey is somewhat liberal.
In New Jersey 57.1% of the people voted for the Democratic Party in the last presidential election, 41.3% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 1.6% voted for an Independent Party.
In the last Presidential election, New Jersey remained very strongly Democratic, 57.1% to 41.3%.
New Jersey voted Democratic in the previous six Presidential elections.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index
New Jersey is somewhat liberal.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index is based on recent voting in national elections, federal campaign contributions by local residents, and consumer personality profiles.
VoteWord™
Displaying 20 years of Presidential voting, visualized in one word.
New Jersey, New Jersey: D d D D D D
How It Works:
Here at BestPlaces, we were looking at the voting patterns since the 2000 election and realized that we could express the results of each election as one letter. R if the Republican Party candidate won, D for the Democrat and I for the Independent. The six elections (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) would be expressed as six-letter word (R R D R R R).
Then we went a little further and added the dimension of magnitude. If the difference of victory was greater than 10 percent, the letter is upper case, and lower case if the difference was less than 10 percent. This allows us to see interesting voting patterns at just a glance.
Here's the VoteWord for Iowa d r d d r r. In the last six elections the state has been closely contested, voting narrowly for the Republican Party candidate in 2016 and 2020 after voting for the Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012. Virginia (r r d d d D) has voted for the Democratic Party in the last four elections.
Individual Campaign Contributions in New Jersey
In the last 4 years (2018-2021), there were 516,105 contributions totaling $89,243,718 to the Democratic Party and liberal campaigns, averaging $173 per contribution.
In the last 4 years, there were 82,512 contributions totaling $53,964,694 to the Republican Party and conservative campaigns, averaging $654 per contribution.
(source: Federal Election Commission)