With five weeks to go before the June 4 primary election, 685,060 New Jersey voters are receiving vote-by-mail ballots, according to an analysis by Associated Press election researcher Ryan Dubicki.
County clerks have mailed out 513,348 VBMs to Democrats and 168,257 to Republicans. An additional 3,441 mail-in ballots have gone to unaffiliated voters who requested them.
That represents about 16% of the total statewide electorate that has chosen to join one of the two major political parties.
So far, 20,714 ballots have been marked as returned by county election officials, representing about 3% of those requested. Democrats have a 3-1 advantage, 15,428 to 5,259.
More than 60% of all returned ballots statewide come from the 1st and 2nd congressional districts, with Camden County producing 43.4% of all returned VBMs in the state, and 46.3% of all Democratic primary VBMS in New Jersey.
In the 3rd district, where five Democrats are facing off for the chance to succeed Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), just 52 vote-by-mail ballots have been marked as returned by registered Democrats – the lowest in the state. But Burlington County – the largest county in the district – has reported zero ballots returned even though the county clerk began mailing ballots ten days ago. (Burlington is the only county in the state that hasn’t marked any as received.)
The Democratic congressional primary in the 8th district between Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla has produced 1,098 votes; 994 of them come from the Hudson County portion of the district.