Good morning, 11th district voters: It’s Election Day!

If you live in the 11th district and you need any help figuring out where and how to vote, click here. If you don’t know whether you live in the district, here’s a map.

Good morning, New Jersey. Despite being a Thursday in the middle of April, it’s Election Day!

For exactly one-twelfth of the state, that is. Voters in the 11th congressional district, covering parts of Morris, Essex, and Passaic Counties, will go to the polls today to choose Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s successor; on the ballot are Democrat Analilia Mejia, Republican Joe Hathaway, and independent Alan Bond.

Sherrill first won the 11th district in 2018, flipping it blue after decades of Republican control. Democrats on the state’s redistricting commission made it much more favorable for their party in 2021, and after Sherrill won the district’s new configuration twice, she went on to ascend to the governor’s office in 2025, kicking off a special election to succeed her.

On the Democratic side, a huge number of notable names leapt at the chance to join Congress, and the special election’s timing meant they had an incredibly short timeframe for them to run. Rising to the front of the pack were former 7th district Rep. Tom Malinowski, former Lieutenant Gov. Tahesha Way, and Essex County Commissioner (D-Montclair), who collectively earned the lion’s share of local endorsements and financial backing.

But it was Mejia, a longtime progressive activist and former top Bernie Sanders staffer, who managed to win the February 5 primary in an upset. Mejia ran as the field’s leftmost candidate, a message that resonated with Democratic voters eager to fight back against President Donald Trump; she was also helped by the fact that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent $2 million trashing Malinowski, her closest competition.

Hathaway, a councilman and former mayor in the suburban town of Randolph, had the GOP lane to himself. Since Mejia won her primary, he’s worked to paint her as far too left and out of touch with the 11th district, which has historically been seen as a more moderate district. “She is unquestionably the furthest left, radical progressive, socialist candidate that they could have put forward,” Hathaway said at one campaign event.

Mejia has responded in kind, saying that Hathaway is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and arguing that he wouldn’t stand up to Trump if elected. “He’s a one-trick pony,” Mejia said during a campaign stop of her own. “My kids, when they don’t have an argument to make, when they’re losing because they don’t have a substantive thing to present, they fall to name-calling. That’s what Joe Hathaway is doing.”

There’s been virtually no public polling of the race, but the one poll that has been released, an internal from Mejia’s campaign, put Mejia up by a 17-point margin. Mejia has also enjoyed a substantial financial advantage over Hathaway, though neither candidate has spent enormous sums (and a mysterious pro-Hathaway super PAC called “The American Centerpoint PAC” has evened the scales somewhat).

Nearly 60,000 voters have already cast their ballots, 36,634 of them by mail and 21,822 of them through early in-person voting; the substantial majority, 61%, have been Democrats. It’s anyone’s guess how many voters will show up at the polls today, especially given the special election’s unusual timing, but the February Democratic primary drew an enormous 65,000-voter turnout despite being similarly oddly timed.

(For reference, 393,914 voters cast 11th district ballots in 2024, when it was on the same ballot as that year’s presidential race, and 273,779 did so in the off-cycle year of 2022.)

Republicans will surely hope for a huge surge in turnout today, but they’ll be fighting against a tide that seems to be turning against them nationwide. In the six House special elections that have happened in 2025 and 2026, Democrats have outperformed their 2024 baseline by between 13 and 25 percentage points, and the 11th district is already a Kamala Harris +9 seat.

But nothing is a foregone conclusion – if you live in the 11th district, head to the polls before 8 p.m. today! Happy voting!

And if you want to see how the 11th district has voted in past races: