Four years ago, New Jersey voters rejected Donald J. Trump’s presidential re-election bid by a resounding 16-point margin.
On Tuesday, in a state where Democrats control every branch of government and outnumber Republicans by 900,000 voters, the gap between people who voted for Mr. Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, narrowed to roughly five points.
Mr. Trump garnered a nearly identical number of votes in New Jersey — 1.9 million — this year and in 2020, according to results tabulated by The Associated Press that are likely to change somewhat as mailed ballots are fully tallied.
But the number of voters who cast ballots for the Democratic candidate fell precipitously, resulting in a stark rightward tilt in the margin.
Ms. Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to run as the nominee of the Democratic Party, got about 500,000 fewer votes than President Biden did in 2020 in New Jersey, one of the most ethnically and racially diverse states in the country.
Ms. Harris still managed to win the state and its 14 electoral college votes, even as Mr. Trump won the White House.
Strategists are likely to pore through voter turnout data for clues about how to interpret New Jersey’s results.
But nowhere was the shift more pronounced than in Passaic County, a region that includes and surrounds Paterson, a poor and struggling 158,000-person city where 63 percent of residents are Latino and 24 percent are Black. Mr. Biden won the county by 17 points in 2020, but on Tuesday Mr. Trump walked away with a three-point advantage as turnout plummeted.
In Hudson County, which includes Jersey City, the state’s second-largest city, the Democratic edge was cut nearly in half, with Ms. Harris winning by 28 points, down from the 46-point advantage Mr. Biden held there four years ago.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, called it a “sobering moment.”
“How could it not be?” he said at a news conference.
“A mistake you could make right now is to put your feet up and think this is just an aberration,” Mr. Murphy added.
By Wednesday morning, Democrats and Republicans preparing for next year’s already heated race for governor had also begun assessing the results and recalibrating their strategy.
Republican candidates said they saw opportunity. Democrats strained to make sense of the numbers. And social justice advocates returned to a warning they have been sounding since Mr. Murphy’s narrow re-election victory in 2021.
“There’s racial disparities all over the state, and we tolerate that to protect the status quo,” said Henal Patel, the law and policy director at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. “Who is talking to these Black and brown voters in these cities about what they need?”
Ras J. Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark who is running for governor, said gender and racial bias played a role in the election result.
“We’re still in the stone age in terms of our value of women. It just has to be said,” Mr. Baraka said.
Mr. Murphy agreed. “Being a woman on the ballot is never easy,” the governor said. “But a woman of African American and South Asian descent — probably doubly or triply true.”
But Mr. Baraka also said that Democrats allowed Mr. Trump to scapegoat poor people and migrants without offering residents a clear policy message about pathways to the middle class.
“People travel here from all over the world to get access to the middle class,” said Mr. Baraka, who runs a predominantly Black and Latino city where fewer than 24 percent of residents own homes. “They’re trying to get there, and it’s become more and more distressful for folks — and more and more unattainable.”
The election cycle was extraordinarily tumultuous, and in New Jersey played out against a backdrop of a brazen political corruption scandal that engulfed the state’s longtime Democratic senator, Robert Menendez, making it harder to clearly explain the rightward shift.
“Granted, Democratic organizations across the country didn’t perform well,” said Steven Fulop, Jersey City’s Democratic mayor who is also running for governor.
“But New Jersey actually underperformed most similar states, which only reinforces what I have been saying for years: The party machine here is stale, lazy and has shown no interest in growing the Democratic Party.”
Urban voters have long been a dependable component of the Democratic Party base.
But in Mr. Fulop’s home county, Hudson, where there are 427,000 registered voters, turnout dropped to 214,855 voters this year, down from 250,458 in 2020. In Passaic County, where there are 343,000 registered voters, turnout fell to 191,000, down from 224,000 four years ago.
State Senator Jon Bramnick, an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, is one of several Republicans already running for governor in 2025. He said Mr. Trump’s third loss in New Jersey — combined with the Democrats’ poor showing — offered proof that a center-right candidate like himself can win.
Two other announced Republican candidates, Jack Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker, and Bill Spadea, a conservative radio host, support Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bramnick said he was convinced that Mr. Trump was still political poison in New Jersey. “Why would you think that people who have pledged their allegiance to Trump can win New Jersey?” Mr. Bramnick said.
Mr. Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker, came within about three points of beating Mr. Murphy in 2021. Since then, roughly 100,000 more voters have registered as Republicans.
Mr. Ciattarelli’s political strategist, Chris Russell, said Mr. Trump’s victory “brings to the table an ability to help broaden that coalition even further.”
Amol Sinha, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, cautioned that with this rise in enthusiasm for Mr. Trump comes the risk of reduced tolerance and heightened political division.
“Racism and sexism are alive and well in New Jersey,” Mr. Sinha said. “There’s a growing right-wing movement here.”
On Wednesday, women in Newark and across the state spoke openly about the rush of pain tinged by frustration at the sharp decline in voters who cast ballots for the Democratic candidate, in spite of record-high support among Black women.
“So proud of the 92 percent of Black women who fought for freedom,” said Charity Haygood, 51, who retired this year as principal of a public school in Newark after working there for 26 years.
“But so sad even that is not enough.”
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