Bills to increase the number of signatures for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, are moving through the New Jersey legislature. The sponsors of these bills, S3994 and A5117, claim that New Jersey general election ballots are crowded. These claims are not true.

The most recent New Jersey gubernatorial election was in 2021. There were only five candidates for Governor on that ballot.

The most recent legislative elections were in 2023. For the 40 seats in the State Senate, there were only 86 candidates, for an average of only 2.15 candidates per seat. For the 80 seats in the Assembly, there were only 160 candidates, for an average of 2 candidates per seat. There was no legislative race with more than three candidates per seat. A few of the legislative races had only one candidate on the ballot.

The most recent presidential and congressional elections were in 2024. For president, there were nine candidates on the New Jersey ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court had said in Williams v Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968), that eight candidates are not so many as to cause any problem. This appears in Justice Harlan’s concurrence on page 47. Other states that had as many or more presidential candidates on the ballot in 2024 were Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Washington.

For the U.S. Senate race in New Jersey in 2024, there were only six candidates. For U.S. House races, there were only 54 candidates for the twelve seats, for an average of 4.5 candidates per district. No district had more than six candidates on the ballot.

The national popular vote for U.S. House in 2024 shows that Republicans polled 3,692,650 more votes than Democrats did. The Republican margin over the Democrats is the largest since 2014. Ironically the Republicans lost one seat in the U.S. House. The tally is 220 Republicans and 215 Democrats.

The presidential margin between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was 2,284,338. Therefore, the Republicans enjoyed a greater margin over Democrats for the House than they did for the presidency.

Ballot Access News does not merge the Working Families Party votes that are cast for Democrats for U.S. House into the Democratic total. Similarly, it does not merge the Conservative Party votes cast for Republicans for U.S. House into the Republican total. There are other news sources that take a different approach, so their totals vary somewhat from the BAN figures.

Republicans for the U.S. House got a slight majority of the vote, 50.29%. The “other” vote for U.S. House (independents, minro parties) was 1.91%.

An analysis of the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr vote shows that he received his highest percentages in counties that were more pro-Trump than that state as a whole. However, he also received his very highest support in counties with a Native American majority, and those counties were more pro-Harris, so the two factors must be weighed together to determine if his presence in the race helped either Trump or Harris.

Kennedy has long been intensely interested in Native American welfare, and Native Americans have long admired him for that. When Kennedy announced his vice-presidential nominee in Oakland, California, Native American speakers and performers were an important part of the meeting.

In the 22 counties with a Native American majority, and in which Kennedy was on the ballot, he received 2.49% of the total vote. This contrasts the the nation as a whole, in which he only received .98% of the vote in the states where he was on the ballot.

A large majority of the Native American vote went for Harris, despite some early news reports that reported the opposite. See this analysis from the Brookings Institution.

Setting aside the relatively small number of Native American-majority counties, one sees that in a large majority of states in which Kennedy was on the ballot, his best county in that state was a county that was more pro-Trump than that state as a whole. This tends to show that Kennedy’s support came at the expense of Trump.

Kennedy was on the ballot in 30 states. In four of them his best county was a Native American-majority county (Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota). Setting those aside, one finds that in 21 states Kennedy’s strongest county was a county that was more pro-Trump than that state as a hole. In only five states was the best Kennedy county a county that was more pro-Harris than that state as a whole. Those five states were Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Mississippi, and Rhode Island.

Alaska has no counties, so this analysis substitute state representative districts for Alaska. Kennedy’s best “county” was Alaska’s 38th State House District, which could be named “Bethel”, and where Kennedy got 5.58% of the vote.