Through Thursday, New Jerseyans cast 285,75 votes, including 265,232 returned vote by mail ballots and 20,518 in-person early votes, according to an analysis by Ryan Dubicki, an election researcher for the Associated Press.
That works out to be a statewide voter turnout of roughly 7%, based on the total number of votes cast by those who have declared an affiliation with either the Democratic or Republican party.
A total of 693,376 vote-by-mail ballots have been sent out by county clerks, with 75% of them being sent to registered Democrats.
Democrats are returning VBMs at a rate of 39.5%, while 35.2% of Republicans have sent their mail-in ballots back.
Almost six-in-ten early votes cast on Wednesday and Thursday (59%) came from Democrats.
Nearly 30,000 advance votes had been cast in New Jersey’s 3rd district, where Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) is giving up his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate – 75% of them from Democrats. The return rate on VBMs is 44% for Democrats and 37.5% for Republicans.
The Burlington County portion of the district has 64% of the mail-in ballots in the Democratic primary, but of the 1,175 early votes cast in the first two days, 26% came from Mercer and 18% from Monmouth.
In the 8th district, where Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) faces a primary challenge from the mayor of Hoboken, Ravi Bhalla, 10,665 advance votes have been cast by Democrats; 85% of them come from Hudson County.
Mayor Brian P. Stack’s Union City has cast more in-person early votes than any other municipality in the state: 1,560, including Friday’s totals. That’s 42% of all early votes in Hudson County.