2021 New Jersey gubernatorial election

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 % 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 . 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.