New Jersey gubernatorial candidates and the Independent Expenditure-Only Filers (IEFs) who promoted them shredded multiple records by spending more than $259 million on this year’s primary and general elections, according to an analysis by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC).

In nominal dollars1, New Jersey’s spending total was the fourth largest amount of dollars ever spent during a gubernatorial election year nationally and ranked sixth when past totals were converted to 2025 dollars to reflect inflation’s impact.

On a per capita basis, calculated by dividing total election spending by the state’s population, New
Jersey ranked first nationally (Table A3).

“It is now evident that this year’s gubernatorial election was the most expensive New Jersey election in
state history by a large margin. It was also one of the top ten costliest gubernatorial elections ever in the nation,” said Joe Donohue, ELEC’s deputy director.

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