Pres-by-LD, NJ State Senate, NJ State Assembly: Our project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation hits New Jersey’s 40 legislative seats. You can find our master list of states here, which we’ll be updating as we add new states; you can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.
Along with Virginia (which we’ve already released), New Jersey is the only state that is scheduled to hold legislative elections this fall. The entire 80-person Assembly will be up for a two-year term in November, while the 40-member state Senate will be up for a four-year term. Each of the Garden’s State’s legislative districts elects one senator and two assemblymembers: Senate and Assembly districts are exactly the same. Democrats hold a 24-16 majority in the Senate and a 52-28 majority in the Assembly.
Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump 55-41, a small drop from Barack Obama’s 58-41 win four years before. Both Clinton and Obama won 28 of the 40 seats, with Clinton trading two Obama seats for two Romney districts. Interestingly, Democratic state Senate President Steve Sweeney sits in a seat that went from Obama to Trump, while GOP Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean’s district went from Romney to Clinton. Sweeney’s South Jersey LD-03 swung from 55-44 Obama to 50-46, while Kean’s central SD-21 drifted from 52-47 Romney to 53-43 Clinton.
The other Obama/Trump seat is SD-01 in South Jersey, which is represented by Sen. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who has flirted with running against GOP Rep. Frank LoBiondo each cycle for over a decade but has never done it; the remaining Romney to Clinton seat is LD-25 in Morris County. Both Obama/Trump seats have all-Democratic legislative delegations, while the two Romney-Clinton districts still send only Republicans to the legislature.
Those aforementioned two Democratic state senators and four assemblymembers are the only Democratic legislators who hail from Trump seats. A grand total of six Republican senators and seven assemblymembers come from Clinton constituencies. Team Blue has a good pickup shot at LD-07, a coastal seat that backed Clinton 62-35. GOP state Sen. Diane Allen has consistency pulled off decisive wins here, but Allen is retiring this year.