New Jersey gubernatorial race sees 800,000+ early votes before Electio

ELIZABETH, N.J. – With under a week to go until Election Day and New Jersey’s gubernatorial race barreling toward a possible photo finish, both major party candidates are touting robust early voting numbers.

“We’re seeing such great results in the vote by mails and the early voting,” Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rep. Mikie Sherrill told Fox News Digital on Wednesday after a meet and greet at a senior center in this northern New Jersey city.

But Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli, in a Fox News Digital interview before huddling with supporters at a restaurant in the central New Jersey township of Robbinsville, highlighted that “we’ve had more Republicans return vote by mail ballots than ever before.”

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The race in New Jersey — which, along with Virginia, are the only two states to hold gubernatorial contests in the year after a presidential election, giving them outsized national attention — may come down to which party does a better job energizing their voters and turning out their base.

Over 800,000 votes have already been cast in the Garden State race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, with the majority coming through mail-in-balloting.

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But nearly a quarter of a million people have cast a ballot in early in-person voting, which kicked off on Saturday. That figure already surpasses the turnout in the nine-day early voting period in the last gubernatorial election four years ago.

Overall, roughly double the number of registered Democrats than Republicans have voted early, which continues a trend seen in the past few election cycles.

Sherrill, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who flew helicopters during her military career and briefly served…