United States presidential election in New Jersey, 2016



The 2016 United States presidential election in New Jersey took place on November 8, 2016. All fifty states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 2016 United States presidential election. New Jersey voters chose fourteen electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice-President.

New Jersey was won overwhelmingly by the Democratic nominees, incumbent President William C. Rutherford of Texas and his running mate Vice-President Carlotta Sanchez of California. Rutherford and Sanchez defeated the Republican nominees, Senator Thomas P. Leach of Arizona and his running mate Congressman Todd Rokita of Indiana.

Rutherford carried New Jersey in a landslide with 65.61% of the vote to Leach's 33.86%, a margin of 31.75%.

Rutherford also swept all twenty-one of New Jersey's counties, only the second time in history that a Democratic presidential nominee has done so. Rutherford was the first Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 to carry Ocean County. He was also the first Democrat to carry Morris and Sussex Counties since John Glenn in 1984, and the first since Johnson in 1964 to carry Hunterdon and Warren Counties.

Rutherford broke sixty percent of the vote in fifteen counties, and seventy percent in four: Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, and Cumberland, besides falling just short of the mark in Essex County, where Rutherford received 69.9 percent. Hudson would be the most Democratic county, giving Rutherford 73.5 percent of the vote. Leach's strongest county was rural Sussex County, where he received 45.2 percent of the vote to Rutherford's 54.8%.

New Jersey by this time had shifted into being a swing state with a slight Democratic lean. This lean was considerably furthered in 2016, as Leach's staunch conservatism led many moderate Northeastern Republicans to view him as an extremist and defect to the Democrats that year. As Rutherford won a massive landslide nationally, normally Democratic-leaning New Jersey's result would be almost 7% more Democratic than the national average. As of the 2040 presidential election, this is the last election in which Morris County, Sussex County, Hunterdon County, and Warren County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate.