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New Jersey voters will select a new governor this fall — early, in-person voting for the Nov. 4 general election begins on Oct. 25.
On the ballot are the New Jersey governor’s seat and every seat in the General Assembly, the lower house of the state Legislature.
Running for governor are Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a four-term Democratic congresswoman from Montclair, and Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican and former member of the Assembly from Somerville.
The race is competitive — Sherrill leads in most polls, but two recent polls, one from Rutgers University and another from Emerson College, have the race at a dead heat. It’s been contentious, too, as the candidates have battled over policy, personality and qualifications.
Here’s NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY Network New Jersey’s guide to the Garden State’s 2025 general election.
How to vote in the 2025 New Jersey general election
These are the key dates in New Jersey’s election for early voting and mail-in ballots.
Where can New Jersey voters drop their mail-in ballots?
New Jersey voters will consider referendum questions that range from getting permission to dredge a river, to approving open space spending and a few municipalities looking to welcome cannabis businesses.
Here are the candidates running for New Jersey’s 80 Assembly seats, listed district by district.
Who is running for governor of New Jersey?
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the fourth-term Democratic congresswoman from Montclair, is the Democratic Party candidate for New Jersey governor.
Jack Ciattarelli, the former assemblyman from Somerville, is the Republican candidate for New Jersey governor.
Who are the candidates for NJ lieutenant governor?
Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s running mate is Centenerary University President Dale Caldwell. What to know.
Jack Ciattarelli’s running made is Morris County Sheriff James Gannon. What to know.
Where do the candidates for NJ governor stand on issues?
How would New Jersey’s candidates for governor tackle affordability?
How would Ciattarelli and Sherrill address housing needs?
How would Ciattarelli and Sherrill address health care?
How would Ciattarelli and Sherrill shape education policy?
How would Ciattarelli and Sherrill manage NJ Transit?
How would Ciattarelli, Sherrill handle NJ’s big economic hurdles?
What have Jack Ciattarelli and Mike Sherrill said in their debates?
New Jersey’s gubernatorial hopefuls — former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli on the Republican side and Rep. Mikie Sherrill for the Democrats — squared off Oct. 8 on a debate stage in New Brunswick.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate, and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate, each individually spent about half an hour talking to journalists from PIX11, which sponsored the Oct. 3 forum.
New Jersey’s two major gubernatorial hopefuls squared off for the first time in a Sept. 21 debate at Rider University. The debate, hosted by the New Jersey Globe, On New Jersey and Rider University, offered Garden State voters a first look at the gubernatorial candidates in discussion together.
How are the Sherrill and Ciattarelli campaigns fundraising?
The New Jersey governor’s race — one of only two in the United States in 2025 — is a referendum on President Donald Trump. As such, both national parties are paying close attention and sending resources to the Garden State.
How have the two campaigns for New Jersey governor raised and spent money in the 2025 election?
NJ governor election polls for Sherrill, Ciattarelli
The latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll shows that while Democratic nominee Rep. Mikie Sherrill has a five-point lead on her Republican opponent former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, it is within the margin of error.
Democrat Mikie Sherrill holds a 7-point lead against Republican Jack Ciattarelli in the race for New Jersey governor, according to the latest poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University, which surveyed just more than 800 New Jersey residents.
Of the 935 likely voters to respond to a late September poll from Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill, 43% support each Sherrill and Ciattarelli while 11% are undecided.
A September Quinnipiac University poll gives Sherrill an eight-point lead over Ciattarelli.
What has Charlie Stile said about the NJ governor’s race?
While the New Jersey governor’s race is in the national spotlight, the two major candidates are not eager to bring in the once and current standard-bearers of their parties for pep rallies.
Republican Jack Ciattarelli emphatically insists that he has no intention of raising the sales tax — or any tax for that matter — if elected governor. Yet, that is not stopping Democrat Mikie Sherrill from warning voters that is exactly what the former Somerset County lawmaker has up his sleeve.
Democrat Mikie Sherrill was not breaking new ground when she attacked Republican Jack Ciattarelli for profiting from the opioid crisis when he owned a medical publishing company.
The president who paved the way for Ciattarelli’s resounding primary victory has now jammed him up in the Gateway tunnel project. And it’s unclear how long he’ll have to remain there.
Ciattarelli is focusing on a different set of records involving Sherrill’s career: the academic and disciplinary records that detail her role in a massive cheating scandal when she was an undergraduate at the U.S. Naval Academy in the early 1990s.
If you are hoping that the two major candidates for New Jersey governor have viable plans to finally tame the beast of the highest-in-the-nation property taxes, you’re wasting your time.
In their first debate, both major candidates for New Jersey governor did their best to stay planted in safe, centrist turf.
The Quinnipiac University poll, which withdrew from measuring New Jersey voters’ views seven years ago, was back last week with a new poll in the New Jersey governor’s race. It showed Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic congresswoman from Montclair, leading her Republican rival, Jack Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker from Somerset County, 49% to 41%.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill’s news conference on “transparency and accountability” on Sept. 12 was on the verge of turning into an informative give-and-take with the press until an aide stepped in to say, “Last question.”
Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s seemingly glowing remarks about the simplified tax structure in Tennessee have turned into a campaign headache.
The first wave television advertising in the New Jersey governor’s race targets key issues that keep both candidates up at night. As a result, the campaigns of Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli are indulging in a form of what psychologists call “exposure therapy” — confronting the source of anxiety rather than retreating from it.
The Donald Trump Campaign for New Jersey governor is hitting full stride this week. While most political analysts — and voters exhausted after nearly eight months of Trump’s daily stomping on long-held norms — are casting their eyes on the 2026 congressional midterms as a referendum on Trump, the New Jersey governor’s race looms as a marquee preview.
