For candidates in this fall’s midterm election in New Jersey, there are new voters to court. The Garden State is home to more than 170,000 newly naturalized U.S. citizens who are registered to vote in the upcoming election. They are younger and more diverse, with many of them from South and Central America.
“I think that there is a potential for growth there for both the Republicans and the Democrats because none of those voting blocks are aligned with either party … The question is, who wants to engage with them? One thing that we know about new voters and new voters of color is that they want to see people who look like them run for office and that’s something that we do not have enough of in New Jersey,” said Patricia Campos-Medina, president of Latina Civic.
