New Jersey appeared to move into swing state territory as former President and current President-elect Donald Trump came closer to winning the state than any Republican candidate has in decades.
Vice President Kamala Harris ended up winning New Jersey with 51.5 percent of the vote, or 2,096,873 votes, while Trump received 46.5 percent of the vote, or 1,893,210 votes, according to the New York Times.
While Trump still lost the state, he came closer to winning the state than he had in the 2020 and 2016 presidential elections. In the 2020 presidential election, President Joe Biden received 57.1 percent of the vote in New Jersey, while Trump received 41.3 percent of the vote.
In the 2016 presidential election against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Clinton received 55.5 percent of the vote in New Jersey, while Trump received 41.4 percent of the vote.
Politico reported that Trump narrowing the gap between him and his Democratic opponent by five points was the “closest presidential showing for a” Republican candidate since former President George H.W. Bush lost the state by 2.4 points in the 1992 presidential election.
Jose Arango, the Chairman of the Republican Party in Hudson County, explained to the outlet that Hispanics in the county were experiencing “high rent and high prices.” The county, which is “just across the Hudson River from Manhattan” is described as leaning Democrat and having a “41 percent Hispanic population.”
Arango criticized the Democratic Party for talking about “helping the poor,” noting that Hudson County is “segregated” and consists of the working class and that there is “no affordable housing.”
“The Democratic Party talks about helping the poor, but if you talk about Hudson County, it’s segregated and the working class, and the liberal enclaves are basically the people who are supporting Wall Street in the places they can’t afford the rent. There’s no affordable housing,” Arango explained.
While Hudson County remained Democrat, Politico noted that in the 2020 election, it leaned 26 percent for Trump, increasing to “about 35 percent” for Trump this year.
In an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Breitbart News’s Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle in January, Trump stated that New Jersey was one of the states that he wanted to “make a heavy play for.”
“One of the other things I’m going to do — and I may be foolish in doing it — is I’m going to make a heavy play for New York, heavy play for New Jersey, heavy play for Virginia, heavy play for New Mexico, and a heavy play for a state that hasn’t been won in years, Minnesota,” Trump said at the time.