By Kaitlin Bavaro
Staff Writer
On Nov. 3, Phil Murphy was reelected as governor of New Jersey after a close race against Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli.
Though most New Jersey voters are registered as Democrats, Murphy and Ciattarelli remained neck and neck throughout the entire election, with more counties voting Republican than Democrat, according to The New York Times. This close call came as a shock to many pollsters, who had predicted an easy win from Murphy.
“Even though the polls before the election favored Murphy, I was surprised he won in the end. The county results were growing stronger for Ciattarelli as the night progressed,” said College senior communication studies major Michael Condiracci.
Voter turnout for New Jersey residents for this election was also very low for this election, according to NJ.com.
The divide between Murphy and Ciattarelli was mainly caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the way that Murphy has handled it thus far, according to The New York Times and NJ.com. Ciattarelli proposed to ease vaccine and mask mandates throughout his campaign and critiqued Murphy’s lockdown approach, claiming that the economy and students suffered because of this, and also often mentioned the amount of New Jersey citizens who died of Covid-19 under Murphy.
Murphy wishes to continue to take a more strict approach to handling the pandemic, as he has already mandated masks in public schools as well as a vaccine mandate for teachers.
Many students of the College voted in the election; students were encouraged by the College to vote. An email sent to students by Dr. Avani Rana — the College’s director of leadership and co-chair of the TCNJVotes! Initiative — on Nov. 1 gave College students information about voting by mail by giving students a place to drop off their ballots as well as information about voting in-person by giving a link to polling locations and times. Out of 99 students who took a poll from The Signal’s Instagram, 75% responded that they voted in the election.
The College was recognized as the 2021 ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge award winner as the recipient of the 2021 Best in Class Overall Highest Voting Rate at a Public, 4-year Award. The College also won the 2021 Highest Voter Registration for the 2020 election – 4-year, the Highest Voter Turnout – 4-year and the Most Improved Voter Turnout 4-year awards, out of 426 colleges from 19 states that participated in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.
The registration rate, voting rate of registered students and voting rate of eligible students at the College on Election Day all increased from 2016 to 2020 (vote.tcnj.edu).
The reactions from students of the College to the results of the election range from “relieved” and “glad” to “sad” and “angry,” as well as indifferent.
“I think Murphy was clearly the better candidate, so it would have been nice to see the voters overwhelmingly elect a reasonable and competent governor,” said sophomore political science major Yarden Mach. “The poor performance by Democrats in general caused them to lose seats in both houses of the legislature. If Murphy did better, they probably would have lost fewer seats.”
