“I think the wins in some parts of the Legislature show New Jersey is still a true-blue state,” said Weinberg, who is retiring in January. “I think the losses in other parts show there are many voters who are upset bread-and-butter issues — taxes, that kind of thing. There isn’t an overall in the way I look at this.”
Julia Sass Rubin, a professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, agreed.
“I think it’s a very mixed message,” Sass Rubin said. “Clearly, there was a red wave in parts of the state. The turnout in some counties was up substantially for Republicans. In other places, Democrats performed much better than 2017. It was really uneven.”