106,114 have already voted in N.J. elections

With a little more than four weeks to go before Election Day,  voters have already returned 11.6% of vote-by-mail ballots for New Jersey’s 2023 midterm legislative elections, according to an analysis conducted by Associated Press election researcher Ryan Dubicki.

A total of 106,114 mail-in ballots have been recorded as received by county election officials out of the 912,337 sent out.   Roughly two-thirds of the returned ballots statewide have come from Democrats (66%), while nearly 23% came from Republicans.

Of the more than 900,000 ballots mailed, 57.5% went to registered Democrats and 18.4% to GOP voters.  Democrats have sent back 13% of their ballots, while 14% of Republicans have done the same.

Monmouth County, which has struggled to learn how to operate a new sorting machine over the last week, made tremendous inroads marking mail-in ballots as returned on Thursday.

In the 11th district, where State Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Long Branch) faces Republican Steve Dnistrian, 1,495 ballots (12.8%) of all VBMS have now been recorded as returned, with Democratic returns outpacing Republicans by a 3-1 margin.

Democrats have similar advantages in two closely watched South Jersey districts.

In the 3rd, where State Sen. Edward Durr (R-Logan) faces former Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Paulsboro), 23% of the vote-by-mail ballots have been cast; nearly three times as many Democrats requested VBMs as Republicans, and have a 68%-21% advantage on returned ballots.

In District 4, where a Democratic incumbent is retiring after 20 years in the Senate, 61% of all vote-by-mail ballots sent out by county clerks were to Democrats, and 20% to Republicans.  Of the returned VBMs – 16% of all mailed – Democrats have a 3-1 edge.

In the 16th district, Democrats also have an edge: 55% of mailed ballots were to Democrats and 18% to Republicans.  69% of the ballots already returned were from Democrats and 31% from Republicans.

The Hudson County Board of Elections remains slow to record mail-in ballots.  In District 33, just one VBM was recorded as received; that ballot came from a Democrat.