New Jersey is one of the most fundamentally anti-gun states in the nation. Gov. Phil Murphy wasn’t just a non-supporter of the Second Amendment; he was vehemently and aggressively opposed to actually following it. He did everything he could to make it harder and harder to be a lawful gun owner in the Garden State and if he’d had half a chance, he probably would have banned them entirely.
But he’s on his way out, which means it’s time for someone new in the governor’s mansion, and as our own John Petrolino writes at America’s 1st Freedom, the odds of gun rights coming out of this election in a decent place are better than ever.
In the 2021 New Jersey gubernatorial election, Republican Jack Ciattarelli received 1,255,185 votes to Democrat Phil Murphy’s 1,339,471. This close call for Murphy shocked the New Jersey political establishment. Polls had been showing Murphy to be as much as 20 points ahead in a state that then had about a million more registered Democrats than Republicans. In the end, the difference was not even close to a million—it was about 84,000 votes. Part of the reason for this close election for an incumbent was that Second Amendment advocates had shown up to vote against a candidate who blamed them and American freedom for crime.
Now Ciattarelli is facing off against another anti-Second Amendment candidate, Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, and, at the time we’re writing this, the polls are again showing Ciattarelli to be well behind—but are these polls accurate?
Compared to August 2021, or about three months before Murphy won reelection, there are now 167,000 more registered Republican voters in the state (an 11% increase), while the number of Democrats has dropped by about 47,000 (or about 2%), according to state data.
Still, there are about 860,000 more Democrats registered, but a lot of national data shows that an increasing number of Democrats own guns and appreciate our right to keep and bear arms. Since the NRA-backed Bruen decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, which confirmed that our Second Amendment rights do indeed extend outside our homes, the number of concealed-carry permit applications in New Jersey increased by roughly 5,000%.
Further, Sherrill isn’t really harping on gun control on the campaign trail. Her history makes it clear that she’s anti-gun and vehemently so, but she’s not really talking about it.
Sure, it’s possible she thinks there may not be much of a reason for her to discuss it, but it’s probably because it’s not as winning an issue for her as she might like to think.
As John points out, though, Ciattarelli nearly unseated Murphy despite trailing significantly in the polls. It’s unlikely that he’ll have a worse turnout, and this time he’s not fighting the power of incumbency.
We saw New Jersey come out surprisingly strong for President Trump in 2024, and while it wasn’t enough to flip the state, it was still significant in how close it was. The same goes for Ciattarelli in 2021.
With the fact that gun rights are seemingly becoming far more important to people in New Jersey on both sides of the aisle, it’s very possible that we might see an upset coming up.
If so, gun rights might enjoy something it hasn’t in quite some time, at least in New Jersey. Security.
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