NJ election results: How will we know who won on Tuesday?

🚨 BREAKING NEWS: AP projects Mikie Sherrill as winner of NJ governor's race

The next governor of New Jersey will either be Jack Ciattarelli or Mikie Sherrill.

That much we know. Who for sure will lead this state of 9.5 million people under President Trump's second term will likely be decided Tuesday night.

While Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 4, more than a million voters have already cast their ballots in early in-person voting or vote-by-mail.

Mail-in ballots and early voting results will be tabulated by each of the state's 21 county clerk's offices, which also will collect results from municipal polling places on election night.

The state's Division of Elections will not tabulate results on election night, but New Jersey 101.5 reporters will be collecting county-by-county data as it becomes available to keep a running tally on our website. New Jersey 101.5 will update results every 30 minutes and send out alerts on our free app.

In addition to the governor's race, we are also watching the mayoral race in the state's second-largest city, where former Gov. Jim McGreevey is making a bid to return to public office, this time as leader of Jersey City.

Will we know the results by midnight? That depends on how close the race is.

Four years ago, Ciattarelli — also the Republican candidate this year — gave Gov. Phil Murphy an election night scare. Murphy, however, garnered enough votes — a 3-point margin — to become the first Democratic governor in decades to win re-election in New Jersey.

The Associated Press, meanwhile, will be calling winners in New Jersey and Virginia. The AP's calls are not official but they do allow the public to know who the winner will be once every last vote is counted, which can sometimes take weeks.

Comparing to 2021 race

In 2021, Murphy won by 84,286 votes, getting 51% to 48% for Ciattarelli. He was the first Democrat to win re-election since 1977.

When Murphy won his first term, he beat Kim Guadagno by 14 points or 303,527 votes. In his re-election, Murphy grew his vote total by more than 11% but Ciattarelli got 40% more votes than Guadagno and flipped three counties. Ciattarelli also outperformed Gov. Chris Christie's re-election totals in nine counties.

Recent polls have put Ciattarelli in a dead heat with U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill. And while President Donald Trump lost New Jersey in the presidential race last year, Trump made significant inroads in typically Democratic counties, underscoring the competitive nature of this year's race.

2025 early voting counts

As of this weekend, the breakdown of returned ballots by voter affiliation. (Note that a voter can vote for a candidate of another party.)

Not affiliated: 235,000

Republicans: 347,000

Democrats: 614,000

How The AP's vote count works

The AP’s vote count brings together information that otherwise might not be available online for days or weeks after an election or is scattered across hundreds of local websites. Without national standards or consistent expectations across states, it also ensures the data is in a standard format, uses standard terms and undergoes rigorous quality control.

As votes are coming in, the AP will analyze races to determine the winners.

One key piece that the AP considers is how many ballots are uncounted and from what areas. In cases where official or exact tallies of the outstanding vote are unavailable, the AP estimates the turnout in every race based on several factors and uses that estimate to track how much of the vote has been counted and how much remains.

The AP also tries to determine how ballots counted so far were cast and the types of vote, such as mail ballots or ballots cast in person on Election Day, that remain.

That is because the method that voters choose can be correlated to the party they voted for. Since voting by mail became highly politicized in the 2020 election, Democrats have been more likely to vote by mail, while Republicans have been more likely to vote in-person on Election Day.

In many states, it is possible to know which votes will be counted first, based on past elections or plans announced by election officials. In others, votes are clearly marked by type when released.

How The AP calls races

In almost all cases, races can be called well before all votes have been counted. The AP’s team of election journalists and analysts will call a race as soon as a clear winner can be determined.

In competitive races, AP analysts may need to wait until additional votes are tallied or to confirm specific information about how many ballots are left to count.

The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of vote results and other election data that one candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner once all the votes have been counted.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report