The 2013 New Jersey General Election Gubernatorial Results are now official – posted by the New Jersey Division of Elections in the document Official List Candidates for Governor For General Election 11/05/2013 Election on December 4, 2013. The final results are Republican Chris Christie 1,278,932 (60.2%), Democrat Barbara Buono 809,978 (38.2%), Libertarian Kenneth R. Kaplan 12,155 (0.57%), Green Party candidate Steven Welzer 8,295 (0.4%) and four other minor party candidates with a combined total of 11,506 votes (0.54%). The margin of victory is 466,714 votes (22.2%). The Election Atlas also includes in its tally 2,175 write-in votes collected from individual county election reports that are not included in the “Official List” document.
Overall, the result is a solid Republican win for the incumbent in a heavily Democratic state. The last time a Republican won the race for Governor in New Jersey by such a large margin was by Thomas H. Kean in 1985. In 2013, Christie won all but two counties (falling short in Essex and Gloucester) – picking up six more counties relative to his win in 2009 on the back of an 18.6% swing statewide. His strongest showing was in Ocean County (75.7%) and had his largest swing in Hudson County (32.3%) although still coming up short of winning the county by 11.1%. The total votes counted in 2013 are 2,106,377 – a significant drop from 2009, where 2,425,441 votes were tallied (a drop of 319,064). Christie received 95,208 more votes vs. his run in 2009 while Buono received 284,792 fewer votes in 2013 than Jon S. Corzine did on the Democratic ticket in 2009. Full results are available for exploration here.
Go Christie!!!!