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NJ early voting begins Saturday. Here's everything you need to know.
By
Mike Hayes
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 11:01 a.m. ET
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By
Mike Hayes
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 11:01 a.m. ET
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The midterm elections are finally here. Early in-person voting in New Jersey kicks off on Saturday, Oct. 24 and runs until Nov. 1.
Vote-by-mail has been open for several weeks and remains an option for Garden State voters until Election Day, Nov. 3.
For those waiting until the big day, polls across the state will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Election results in at least one New Jersey race could help determine whether Democrats or Republicans will hold the majority in the House and Senate for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
Here are the key races we’re keeping an eye on in New Jersey:
The Big One
Kean vs. Bennett in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District is the state’s marquee race this year.
Rep. Tom Kean Jr., the two-term Republican incumbent, is the scion of one of the Garden State’s most well-known political families. His father served two terms as a popular governor in the 1980s. Kean himself served in the state Legislature for two decades. He won his district easily in the past two elections.
Kean’s challenger is first-time Democratic nominee Rebecca Bennett. She’s a millennial mom, a former Navy helicopter pilot with 15 years of military experience, and a healthcare executive. Her background as a pilot and her center-left stance on key issues like healthcare and immigration have drawn comparisons between Bennett and the state’s Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
Democrat Rebecca Bennett campaigning in Bernards Township, New Jersey.
Aristide Economopoulos for Gothamist
Republicans enjoy about a 19,000-voter advantage in the district, which stretches from the eastern edge of Central Jersey across the state to the Pennsylvania border. But pollsters and political watchdogs have called the race a toss-up that could lean Democratic.
Kean was absent from Congress for 116 days earlier this year and missed over 100 votes while being treated for depression. Since returning to the campaign trail at the end of June, Kean has tried to cast Bennett as too liberal for the conservative-leaning district. At the same time, he’s had to contend with Trump’s slumping popularity numbers in New Jersey.
Republican Rep. Tom Kean, Jr. in Washington D.C.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
To woo Republicans and Independents, Bennett has focused her campaign less on cultural issues and more on affordability, like reducing the costs of healthcare and childcare.
But controversy surrounding a proposed ICE facility in the district, Kean’s absence from Congress and his stock trading while in office have also been discussion points throughout the campaign.
The ‘magnitude’ of a win
Other congressional races across the state are less competitive, but margins of victory and voter turnout in other districts should reveal strengths and weaknesses in the candidates and their parties.
In South Jersey, Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew is running against Democrat Zack Mullock in New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District.
Democrats around the state have mused about taking out Van Drew ever since Sherrill flipped several red counties in his district blue during the 2025 gubernatorial. The Cook Political Report has this race ranked “solid R” in the GOP’s favor. But Matt Hale, a politics professor at Seton Hall University, said the two-term Republican could be at risk if Democrats outperform expectations and turn a blue wave into a “tsunami.”
“If that happens, the magnitude of the [Democratic] tsunami nationwide will be something like we've never seen,” he said.
Democratic Rep. Analilia Mejia
Analilia Mejia for New Jersey
In North Jersey, far-left progressive Democratic Rep. Analilia Mejia is running for her first full term in Congress. She’s facing Republican Joe Hathaway, whom she beat by 21 points in April’s special election. The district spans six counties and includes a mix of urban and suburban towns, including liberal strongholds like Maplewood and Montclair.
Mejia is heavily favored to beat Hathaway again. Political analysis sites Cook Political Report and Decision Desk HQ rate the race “safe” for Democrats. Another progressive, first-time candidate Dr. Adam Hamawy is also expected to win in the state’s heavily Democratic 12th District near Trenton.
But for New Jersey Democrats, the real test will be the margins of victory. Strong turnout could signal whether the party’s progressive movement has enduring strength.
In New Jersey’s 9th District, Democratic Rep. Nellie Pou is running against Rosie Pino, a Republican town councilmember from Clifton.
The district includes much of Passaic County, where nearly 50% of the population is Latino. Trump unexpectedly carried Passaic County in the 2024 presidential election thanks to impressive turnout among Latino voters. But Pou also outperformed her party that year, beating Republican Billy Prempeh by roughly 5 points.
Democrats have said they hope Pou's strong victory this year indicates that a large chunk of Latino voters have returned to their party, at least for now.
Cory Booker’s time to shine?
With no presidential race this year, Sen. Cory Booker gets the privilege of sitting at the top of the Democrats' ballot.
Booker is seeking his fourth statewide victory since winning a 2013 special election after Sen. Frank Lautenberg's death.
No Republican has won a Senate seat in the state since 1972. Booker holds a massive fundraising advantage over his opponent, Republican Justin Murphy. Booker’s campaign has raised $35 million, while Murphy has raised a mere $75,000. While there’s no public polling in the race, prediction markets give Booker a 97% chance of victory.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Speculation suggests Booker may run for president again in 2028. His campaign will likely watch how well he does in more conservative parts of New Jersey, which could show how broad his appeal might be as a national candidate in what’s expected to be an ultra-crowded Democratic presidential primary next year.
Further down the ballot
North Jersey voters will also be choosing county commissioners on Nov. 3. County commissioners oversee a variety of regional services, like roads, law enforcement, parks and services like SNAP and Medicaid. The county budgets that the commissioners oversee can be as large as $900 million.
Nonprofit activist and progressive Democrat Alex Valdez defeated two more moderate candidates to win the June primary for Hudson County's 9th District. Valdez is running on a platform to expand affordable housing and public transportation in the county. He now faces Republican Anmol Gopalak, a 19-year-old recent high school graduate who has called for more support and expanded resources for veterans and law enforcement.
All nine of Essex County's Board of Commissioners seats are up for election. The five Democrats who represent the county districts are running unopposed. But both parties have each put four candidates forward for the remaining at-large board seats. Voters will select up to four of them on their ballot. Republicans haven’t won an at-large commissioner seat in the county since 1971.
It’s not a big year in the state for ballot questions, but it has been a big year on AI data centers. In Cumberland County, voters in Downes Township are being asked to vote ‘yes-or-no’ on whether or not they support data centers in their town. Township officials are considering a ban on data centers, which over 100 municipalities in the state have already banned locally.
In NJ, you’re never that far from the next election…
Life in New Jersey comes with three guarantees: death, taxes and voting every dang year.
New Jersey is one of a handful of states that hold off-year elections. Once the Garden State counts all the 2026 votes, it’ll be time to start thinking about 2027, when the entire state Legislature will be up for re-election.
New Jersey State House in Trenton.
New Jersey’s 2027 races will serve as a bellwether for Democrats and Republicans going into the 2028 presidential election. Ashley Koning, director of Rutgers University's Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, said the off-year elections will indicate which party has momentum heading into the 2028 presidential election.
“The state Legislature [elections] will just show us where the two parties stand within New Jersey at that point a year out from the presidential,” she said.
Next year’s elections are particularly notable. It’ll be the first time the entire state Senate and Assembly is up for election since the fall of the ballot-design system known as ‘The Line’, which allowed county party committees to give preferential placement on the ballot page to their endorsed candidates.
New Jersey outlawed The Line in March 2025. Since then, the state has seen several crowded, competitive primaries — with more progressive candidates like Mejia and Hamawy winning without the endorsement of county party bosses.
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Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
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