Gov. Phil Murphy appears to have won a second term, a reelection by one of the slimmest margins in four decades.

But after an election where Democrats lost ground in the Legislature and Murphy’s luster seems tarnished by these surprising results, what now for his plans for an aggressive progressive agenda?

The seesaw gubernatorial election results that had Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman from Somerset County, leading when both men addressed their supporters shortly after midnight Tuesday moved back in Gov. Phil Murphy’s favor during the day Wednesday.

When that margin widened to 19,294, boosting Murphy’s lead to 0.08% at 6:26 p.m., the Associated Press called the race. Murphy had captured 1.21 million votes to Ciattarelli’s 1.19 million. That prompted a flurry of congratulations, including one from the Democratic Governors Association, which spent at least $2.7 million on the race as of last Friday.

The Murphy campaign had remained “confident” during the day Wednesday, with officials stating that when all the mail-in ballots and some pockets of outstanding Election Day votes were counted, Murphy would be the first Democratic incumbent governor in 44 years to win reelection, said campaign spokesman Jerrel Harvey.

Breaking the second-term jinx

“There’s a reason for that,” Harvey said of Democrats’ inability to win a second term over the past four decades. He said that while Murphy built a “well-resourced campaign,” the slow economic recovery, higher gas prices and a “formidable opponent” in Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman, made the victory anything but inevitable.

Chris Russell, Ciattarelli’s strategist, said his candidate outperformed public polling and expectations — and appears to have brought a number of Republicans into the Legislature on his coattails — because he is “a truly talented communicator, his work ethic is unbelievable and he is able to speak to people in a way they have not been spoken to in a while so they feel they have had their voices heard.”

Before AP called the race, Russell said the campaign was taking a wait-and-see approach as votes continue to be tallied through the next five days and Ciattarelli could still win.

“We’re proud of the race we ran,” he said. “We still think we have a shot at it.”

All the votes, including an unknown number of provisional ballots, won’t be tallied before next Monday at the earliest, and the razor-thin margin could result in a request for a recount. And whatever the outcome, some observers said the fact that the race was this close — in a contest Murphy was largely expected to win — means New Jersey’s Democratic Party will be less willing to support some of the progressive programs Murphy has championed since he was elected governor in 2018.

Dems stay home

Political pundits from both major parties attributed the tight race to a lack of enthusiasm and low turnout among Democrats — perhaps fueled by polling that turned out to be wrong — plus Ciattarelli’s tireless retail campaigning at diners and community events. But as the sun set Wednesday, Murphy’s once-slim lead appeared to be growing more secure, with the majority of mail-in ballots in favor of the Democratic incumbent.

Michael DuHaime, who was the chief strategist for former GOP Gov. Chris Christie, said during the annual “Morning After” discussion by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University that the outstanding mail-in ballots, regardless of where they are pending “are disproportionately Murphy’s” and could make him the victor.

An NJ Spotlight News analysis of the results reported by the counties as of 10 p.m. and the state database of mail-in ballots received by county election officials through the end of the day Tuesday shows about 100,000 ballots yet to be tallied. About 68,000 of these were cast by Democrats, with about 21,000 by Republicans and 18,000 by unaffiliated or third-party registrants. Some or all of the mail-in ballots cast as of the close of polls have yet to be counted and reported by Atlantic, Bergen, Camden, Middlesex, Monmouth and Morris counties.

“I think he’s gonna squeak it out because of vote-by-mail,” said Julie Roginsky, a Democratic strategist who worked on Murphy’s first campaign in 2017 but left citing a “toxic” climate that included misogyny. She called it “unconscionable” that the race was so close, given there are 1 million more registered Democrats in the state than Republicans. “Obviously, this is a race that should have been won by double digits.”

Still, in addition to being the first Democrat in more than four decades to win reelection as governor, Murphy is also the first governor since 1985 to be elected in the year after a candidate of his own party was voted into the presidency.

Turnout on Tuesday was also a significant factor in the closeness of the race, including a big increase in voter participation in some Republican-leaning communities.

GOP gets out the vote

In the 10 counties where Murphy won or is currently leading, the number of people whose votes have been counted so far is about 6% higher than in 2017. The biggest increase in a county that voted for Murphy was in Burlington, where turnout rose by about 17%. In the 11 counties won by Ciattarelli or where he is ahead, turnout is 17% higher than four years ago. These include Ocean County, which has the highest increase reported so far, about a 31% increase in the number of people who voted this year, compared with 2017.

“On the most basic level, Jack Ciattarelli got out his vote and Phil Murphy did not,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “There’s a lot we did not see coming, but one thing we’ve been talking about for weeks is how urban voters were simply not participating in early and mail-in voters … The response was that the turnout operations in the cities would be fired up on Election Day. It appears that did not happen, at least not as compared with 2017 or 2009 turnout.”

New Jersey’s gubernatorial race was not the only surprise on election night. Senate President Steve Sweeney, a powerful Gloucester County Democrat, was trailing by 2,000 votes to a relatively unknown Republican challenger, Edward Durr, a truck driver who spent just $153 on his campaign. Competitive legislative contests in two other South Jersey districts were also leaning Republican Wednesday evening.

While the state Senate and Assembly are both expected to remain in Democratic control, the slimmer margins — and challenge to Murphy — could make members less likely to support progressive legislation, like a reproductive-health bill designed to enshrine abortion rights in state law and expand access to the medical procedure. Murphy promised during his campaign he would sign this bill, which lawmakers have not yet scheduled for a hearing, and protecting abortion was a major plank in his policy platform. Vaccine mandates, clean-energy efforts and other policy issues could also be shaped by the close race, experts said.

“After yesterday, it should be clear that whatever mandate Democrats thought they had to govern from the far left no longer exists. In its place, voters in New Jersey and elsewhere left a new mandate for all elected officials to get back to basics and start addressing their constituents’ important concerns,” Republican members of the state Senate said in a press release.