For Democrats in New Jersey supporting Representative Mikie Sherrill for governor, the magic number has been 266,000.
That was the Democratic early vote advantage in mail ballots and in-person votes that Gov. Philip D. Murphy built heading into Election Day in 2021, when he beat the Republican Jack Ciattarelli by roughly three points. And that was the number Ms. Sherrill’s supporters have been aiming for in her campaign against Mr. Ciattarelli this year.
The actual number turned out to be roughly 267,000 as of Saturday — as the Democrats’ early voters once again turned out in larger numbers than Republicans.
The early returns in New Jersey are giving Democrats in the state cautious optimism, as both the overall high turnout and the Democratic early vote advantage in their view signal a path to victory for Ms. Sherrill.
More than 1.1 million voters had already cast a ballot in New Jersey as of Saturday, the last day for which data was available. Roughly 347,000 registered Republicans had voted early, either in person or by mail, compared to about 614,000 registered Democrats. There were about 235,000 voters with no party affiliation who had also voted early.
But parsing early voting numbers can be perilous. There are large numbers of ballots from unaffiliated voters, and a surge on Election Day is always possible for either side. More people still vote on Election Day, and trends in the early vote data often are diminished or counteracted entirely once all votes are cast.
Also, voters don’t always vote for their party’s candidate, and the additional share of unaffiliated voters makes it hard to predict exactly what will happen on Election Day.
Take the 2024 election. Democrats enjoyed a 17 percentage point advantage over Republicans in New Jersey during early voting, and a 12-point advantage after all ballots were cast. But Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, won the state by only six percentage points.
And previous presumptions about early voting — that mail votes where overwhelmingly cast by Democrats and that Republicans largely vote on Election Day — are starting to erode.
Political experts in the state point out that much of the early vote trends in the state mirror, at least in percentages, both the 2021 governor’s race and the 2024 presidential election, which saw very strong Republican turnout but still resulted in single-digit Democratic victories.
“Right now the electorate is not hugely different than it was in ’24 or ’21, and so therefore Jack’s going to need a lot of crossover votes,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist who ran former Gov. Chris Christie’s campaigns. Mr. DuHaime noted that Mr. Christie’s first campaign did exactly that, winning unaffiliated voters by a 2-to-1 margin and 20 percent of registered Democrats.
Republicans in the state are not expressing much concern about the early vote totals. In fact, Mr. Ciattarelli’s campaign is confident in what they’re seeing in early numbers. They expect this election to have far higher overall turnout than 2021, which could dilute any lead built through early voting.
“We’re old enough to remember Kamala Harris’s impenetrable vote-by-mail firewall in Pennsylvania this time last year,” said Chris Russell, a campaign strategist for Mr. Ciattarelli. (Ms. Harris lost that state by roughly two percentage points last year.)
But the Sherrill campaign remains insistent that their early vote advantage is putting them on a path to victory.
“Democrats are showing up to vote in droves, and our strong firewall continues to grow — it makes sense Jack Ciattarelli is playing catch up,” said Sean Higgins, a spokesman for the Sherrill campaign.
Getting out the vote was top of mind for both campaigns as they crisscrossed the state over the final weekend of the contest.
In Newark, former President Barack Obama headlined a huge rally for Ms. Sherrill at a community college on Saturday night. He framed the race in a national context, saying a victory for Ms. Sherrill would “set a glorious example for this nation.”
He repeatedly urged the crowd to get their ballot in, preferably early.
“Just in case you have not heard, if you have not voted yet, tomorrow is the last day of early voting in New Jersey,” Mr. Obama told the crowd, later turning to one of his signature phrases.
“You can’t boo,” he said. “You’ve got to vote. They won’t hear you if you’re booing, but they’ll hear your vote.”
On Sunday, Mr. Ciattarelli worked his way down the Jersey coast, holding several early voting rallies.
“How many people have already voted?” Mr. Ciattarelli asked a crowd of about 100 vocal supporters a short distance from a polling place in the Leonardo section of Middletown. A sea of hands shot up under a canopy of colorful changing fall leaves.
“That looks like about 50 percent to me,” he said. “This is the last day of early voting. If you’ve got time, do it today. You may not want to wait until Tuesday. You never know what could happen on Election Day.”
Afterward, asked by reporters how early voting was going, Mr. Ciattarelli projected confidence.
“We really like the numbers we see with regard to the vote-by-mail ballots and the early voting,” he said. “We like the numbers. We know we perform well on Election Day, so we’re in great shape.”
Several voters at a previous campaign stop in nearby Hazlet had already voted at a fire station down the block. The line went well out of the entrance door and along the side of the building.
Vinny Hill, 65, a retired steamfitter from Hazlet, and his wife, June, 63, a retired supermarket manager, planned to vote for Mr. Ciattarelli. Though they had not voted early, they understood why it has become a more critical part of campaigning.
“A lot of people, they say they’re going to vote on the day, and then something comes up,” said Mr. Hill, clad in a New York Giants sweatshirt. “You never know.”
Tracey Tully contributed reporting.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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