Millions of New Jersey voters anxious to know who won the NJ governor election between Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli could potentially see results shortly after polls close at 8 p.m. ET tonight — contrasting the 2021 governor election when voters had to wait nearly 24 hours.
In New Jersey’s last governor election, outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy, who is term-limited after eight years, wasn’t declared the official winner until 22 ½ hours after polls closed — at 6:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. It was a grueling daylong vote counting mail-in ballots before Murphy was declared the winner, narrowly beating Ciattarelli by just 3% of the vote.
In 2022, Murphy signed a series of bills that included a provision allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days before Election Day (Bill A-3822). Ciattarelli had initially led the vote count on Election Night 2021, but Murphy pulled ahead by morning due to the overabundance of mail-in ballots that took hours to tally.
Murphy’s voting reform package included a total of seven bills, and also made changes to automatic voter registration and in-person early voting to create “more accessible, transparent and stronger elections in the state,” he said at the time.
When Sherrill won the Democratic primary earlier this year, the race was called within 40 minutes — a first case-in-point that the new law has been effective, according to Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for NJ Politics at Rider University. She noted it was a “clear difference” from the 2021 election night, allowing counties to stick to just votes cast on Election Day itself, and not backlogged mail-in votes.
Mikie Sherrill, Democratic candidate for governor, delivers a speech during a voter rally at Essex County College in Newark on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025.
When will election results start coming in?
Election results will start getting tabulated by each NJ county after polls close at 8 p.m. ET. Since NJ law now allows mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days ahead of time, county offices shouldn’t have as many votes to tabulate after votes are cast tonight.
Results of NJ governor election; see live updates
To see results live from the NJ governor election and the General Assembly you can head to NorthJersey.com or APP.com. For county, local and school board races in North Jersey, check northjersey.com/news/elections. For local results in Monmouth and Ocean counties in NJ, head to app.com.
New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli speaks to his supporters in a parking lot off Route 35 in Hazlet on Sunday, November 2, 2025, during a rally two days before the election.
NJ governor election results by county
After polls close at 8 p.m. ET tonight, Nov. 4, 2024, each NJ county will post their election results individually. Here is the list of all 21 counties, plus the links to their results:
Who is winning the NJ governor race? NJ election prediction
The latest polls in the NJ governor race predict Democrat Mikie Sherrill will win over Republican Jack Ciattarelli. Sherrill leads anywhere from 1 point to 12 points, depending on whether you check AtlasIntel (1 point), the “most accurate” according to 538 founder Nate Silver, or the latest poll today from John Zogby Strategies showing Sherill with 55% over Ciattarelli’s 43%.
In the 2024 presidential election, nearly 20% of North Jersey towns shifted their votes from Democrat (blue) to Republican (red), which could signal a shift in this election. Additionally, there are 167,000 more Republicans registered to vote in this election then in 2021’s governor election, and about 50,000 less Democrats.
Lori Comstock is a New Jersey-based journalist with the Mid-Atlantic Connect Team.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: When will we know who won NJ governor? The latest results, live update
