Since Election Day, Tuesday November 2, the polling and punditry class has been at a loss to explain the closeness of the gubernatorial race between the winner, incumbent Democratic Governor Phil Murphy and his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli.  That includes me – I had relied on the reputable New Jersey polls, the Monmouth Poll, the FDU Poll, the Rutgers Poll, and the Stockton Poll, all of which forecast a Murphy win of approximately eight points.

It is normally axiomatic in punditry that when polls start to coalesce on a margin number, you can rely on it.  And so I did – much to my embarrassment.

Yet three preliminary points are in order.

The first is that when all the votes are counted, the Murphy margin will be approximately four percent.  That is pretty close to the margin of error in all three of these polls, making their results look like far less of a mistake.

Then, there is the explanation given by “conventional wisdom pundits” claiming that “Murphy had gone too far to the left,” and that the results represented a repudiation of his “fiscal Pragmatic Progressivism.”  This is arid nonsense.

This explanation states that the great majority of the electorate was distressed at Murphy’s taxing and spending policies.  Such an explanation flies in the face of what most voters have embraced as acceptable New Jersey governmental expenditure practice.

In New Jersey, the voters cherish their public education system and understand that it requires a high level of governmental expenditure.  They also believe that the expenditure should be mostly financed by a steeply progressive income tax, including the “millionaire’s tax” at the top income brackets, the balance to be financed by the property tax.  Finally, they accept that the income tax revenue be dedicated to direct property tax relief and direct educational expenditure, as the latter would remove much of the burden on the property tax to finance local education.

This education expenditure is at the heart of Phil Murphy’s “pragmatic progressivism.”  His principal tax increase was the “millionaire’s tax”, which proved to be a great benefit to the middle and working classes.  Property taxes rose at a slower rate than in the past, and property tax relief increased.  I find no evidence that there was any massive decline in Murphy’s support from 2017 as a result of his fiscal pragmatic progressive practices.

Another explanation for the election closeness rests with the dubious assertion that there was a lack of enthusiasm for Phil Murphy in the African-American community. We do not yet have relevant data with which to judge this assertion, since we still await definitive exit polls from Edison Research.

We do have sufficient empirical data, however, to establish that there was sufficient enthusiasm for Phil Murphy in the New Jersey African-American community to carry him to an election victory.

The best empirical data consists of the results in municipalities and counties that are primarily communities of color.  Examples abound.

Murphy carried Newark, 27,000 to 3000, Irvington, 7,200 to 340, East Orange, 10,400, to 400.  And he carried Essex County, the most prominent county of color in New Jersey, 125,617 to 43,864. 74% to 26%.

Yet today, we received the most ominous information to date from the FDU poll as to why 1) Jack Ciattarelli’s vote in the 2021 election exceeded the 2017 vote of Kim Guadagno by approximately 350,000 ; and 2) Phil Murphy’s vote exceeded his 2017 vote share by 140,000.  And the issue of systemic racism was the key factor behind the surge of each candidate.

Simply put, if you are a voter who believes that systemic racism continues to plague America, you likely voted for Phil Murphy.  If you believe that systemic racism is not a continuing American nightmare, you likely voted for Jack Ciattarelli.

And the final poll revealed a significant soft underbelly in Murphy’s support on the issue of police reforms.  Voters who did not believe in the existence of systemic racism tended largely to oppose Murphy’s police reforms.  And this issue was perhaps THE major determinant in how people voted in the gubernatorial race.

“When we asked voters about these issues, support for Murphy cratered,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of Government and        Politics at FDU, and the executive director of the poll.  “The difference between asking about police reforms and not asking about them is the difference between the ten-point win people were expecting and the two-point win Murphy got.”

In the survey, an experiment was used to assess the effect of police reform on voter choice. Voters who were not asked about police reform favored Murphy by nine points; those who were asked about police reforms before being asked about the governor’s race favored Murphy by just two points, almost exactly his final margin in the election (as reported in FDU’s last poll).

There were two other points in this FDU poll that were major eye-openers.

First, a voter’s view on systemic racism was more of a determining factor in his or her vote than party preference.

The most striking example of this was the overwhelming preference for Jack Ciattarelli among independent voters that believe systemic racism does not exist. That appears more than anything else to account for Jack Ciattarelli’s equivocation on the issues of systemic racism and racial privilege throughout the campaign.

Second, but hardly unexpectedly, African-American voters are far more likely to believe in the existence of systemic racism than whites.  In fact, as one who grew up in the era of the Kerner Commission, which spoke of America being two societies, one white, the other black, this tells me how little has changed in America.

With systemic racism being the prime differentiating issue in American politics, there is a major consequence for the New Jersey Republican Party.

As I wrote a year ago, the Republican Party in New Jersey will continue to fail as a party of white grievance.  Yes, they can make a statewide election close, as they did this time.   But they cannot win.

Second, it shows that the Democrats will continue to win statewide elections as long as they keep faith with the African-American community.   This involves more than anything else the fight against systemic racism.

It takes courage to keep this fight going. Phil Murphy, the leading social reform governor in America never gave up the battle against systemic racism and won it.  And in the end, Phil Murphy proved that good government is good politics.

Alan Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.