Oct 8, 2025; New Brunswick, NJ, USA; Jack Ciattarelli (R), left, and Mikie Sherrill (D) take the stage during the second New Jersey gubernatorial debate at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. Mandatory Credit: Julian Leshay Guadalupe/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
(Trenton, NJ) — The finish line in the very ugly race for Governor is within sight now. Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill and former Republican Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli have savaged each other, both in their debates and on out the campaign trail. Ciattarelli has questioned aspects of Sherill’s time at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, while Sherill has tried to tie the Republican, and his former medical publishing business to opioid deaths.
Polls over the summer gave Sherill anywhere from an 8 to 10 point lead, but in the final months of the campaign those same surveys of voters find the race has become a whole lot closer. Most show Ciattarelli surging, but the Democrat still holding onto a small lead. Voter turnout in an off-year election will the key to victory. 65% of New Jerseyans voted in the presidential election last November. The campaigns believe just 40% will turn out this November. Democrats hold a more than 850,000 voter edge in registration.
Democratic insiders say they are worried that Sherill has not done enough to excite reliably Latino and Black Democratic voters across the state. So, the campaign is bringing in former President Barak Obama for some campaign rallies just days before the election. Republican insiders say they worried about the enthusiasm for the 63-year-old Ciattarelli, who has run for Governor twice before. Their campaign says President Trump will take part in tele-rallies during the last week of the campaign.
The themes of both campaigns are all too familiar to New Jersey voters. Both candidates promise to bring down property taxes and slow down the soaring cost of electric bills. Lawmakers over the last few decades have only been semi successful in making that happen. Both Ciattarelli and Sherill claim their plans will really work.
Over at the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, researchers are combing through data to try and figure out how the race can be won, and what part of the state will put one of candidates over the top on November 4th . Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute tells CBS that Republicans may have a leg up because they have been out of power in New Jersey for eight years. He says Democrats have the edge in voter rolls, and in a fresh face in Sherill who was not well known until she mounted a run for Governor earlier this year.
© CHRIS LACHALL/USA TODAY NETWORK ATLANTIC GROUP / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Rasmussen believes the race will come down to some small pockets of voters in South Jersey, specifically Atlantic, Cumberland and Gloucester counties. He says those counties were solidly blue when Phil Murphy ran for Governor in 2017, but then turned red during his re-election campaign in 2021. Rasmussen says if the race is close in those counties on election night, that will likely mean a victory for the Democrats and Mikie Sherill.
