For decades, the ballot-line format has been a fundamental element of New Jersey’s primary elections across both parties. All of New Jersey, except for Sussex and Salem counties, currently use this format. Though there are slight variations by county, they’re best understood as grids: The highest-level races—usually a presidential, senatorial, or gubernatorial contest—will occupy the top rows, and each subsequent race will occupy the rows below in descending order (from federal, to state, to local, to party races). Each candidate for office is placed in a particular column so that candidates competing in the same race are aligned horizontally.
The incumbent at the top of the ticket—who will almost always be the best-known candidate on the ballot—will usually receive the endorsement of the county party. The county party’s other endorsements will follow in that same column, which provides an enormous advantage to all those down-ballot sharing a column.
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Julia Sass Rubin, a Rutgers University professor and scholar of the ballot line, backs this up empirically. She has determined that ballot line placement has provided an average advantage of 38 percentage points, which all but guarantees victory for candidates who receive the county party line. According to Rubin, “New Jersey primary voters are encouraged by the county parties, and conditioned by years of practice to vote for all the candidates on the county line.”
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