President-elect Donald J. Trump’s return to power almost capsized Vice President Kamala Harris in New Jersey, an unpredictable outcome that nearly came to pass Tuesday night.

With 94% reporting, Harris won just 51% of Garden State votes to Trump’s 47%, the narrowest margin of victory in the modern era. The Trump campaign outperformed expectations in the suburban counties of Sussex, Warren, Ocean, and Monmouth, creating a beachhead against urban turnout in Newark and Trenton that nearly held. Historians would have to head all the way back to the 1988 contest between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis to find a time when New Jerseyans preferred a Republican presidential candidate.

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A similar scenario played out in Minnesota where Harris secured the same 51-47% victory, raising questions about how poorly she managed to perform in a state that sends “Squad” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to Washington. Trump, already at 277 electoral votes Wednesday morning, nearly padded his margin with 10 from Minnesota and 14 from Jersey. While disappointing, both contests provide Republicans with a blueprint for how to expand the map in presidential years. The belief in “secret” Trump supporters proved salient: a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released last week put Harris’s New Jersey support at 55%, far from where she landed Tuesday.

Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, told the Asbury Park Press it shouldn’t be surprising to see Trump’s sizable gains in New Jersey given the rightward tilt within many of the state’s congressional districts. “We typically paint New Jersey as a blue state and at a federal level we have been blue solidly since the Clinton years,” said Koning. “But when you look further and into congressional districts, we have some of the most affluent and reddest districts in the country. That Central Jersey corridor has a red area on both sides, including Monmouth and Ocean counties.”

“When you ask New Jerseyans where they sit in terms of social issues like abortion, they will side more with Democrats than Republicans,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University. “That affects the federal elections where the Republican party has become more focused and obsessed with cultural issues that don’t appeal to (most) New Jersey voters, abortion for one example.”

Monmouth County, which sits along the middle of New Jersey’s shore, is emblematic of Trump’s ability to flip suburban areas of the county. On Wednesday morning he earned 191,478 to Harris’s 148,376 with all precincts reporting. The county narrowly went for Mitt Romney in 2012 by just 15,000 votes, but in 2020 Trump held it by fewer than 10,000. Statewide, Republicans have seen a surge in party registrations since 2020; 386,000 voters have been added to the rolls, among them 207,252 Republicans. Just 78,168 Democrats came online during that time while more than 100,000 independents registered.

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