NJ election results 2023: Live Election Day updates from Central Jersey

Time to cast your vote New Jersey. Follow along here for live coverage of the 2023 elections.

We’ll have updates from local races across the region, including municipal, school board and ballot measures, as well as the state Legislature.

Check back here throughout the day and night for live updates from our reporters from the polls, including comments from candidates and voters. Don’t forget to refresh after the polls close Tuesday to see results for your local races.

You can see votes counts as precincts start to report here. And state Senate and Assembly results will be here.

More: Our guide to Central Jersey’s 2023 elections for state, local offices and school boards

Check back for updates.  

Federal observers will monitor polling sites in Union County to make sure the county is complying with the Voting Rights Act, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey.

In June, a federal court approved a consent decree that requires the county to print ballots in English and Spanish, among other things, such as making trained bilingual election officials available as well as poll workers to help Spanish-speaking voters. 

The agreement followed a complaint by federal prosecutors that alleged the county violated provisions of the Voting Rights Act protecting residents with limited English proficiency and people with disabilities. 

Those reporting potential violations of federal voting rights laws may contact the Civil Rights Division at civilrights.justice.gov or 800-253-3931.

Taxes and the economy are the biggest concerns among New Jersey voters when deciding how to cast their ballots, according to a Rutgers Eagleton poll released on Election Day. 

Forty percent of those polled named fiscal issues as most important to them. 

“The culture wars redux we have seen this election cycle may sound nice in soundbites and mailers and may galvanize some in each party’s base and persuade some in the middle,” said Ashley Koning, an assistant research professor and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University New Brunswick.

“But Democrats, Republicans and independents alike say they are most concerned about the economy, cost of living and taxes — and plan to vote with these issues in mind,” Koning said.

When pollsters asked directly about specific issues, 87% of respondents said affordability and cost of living were major factors in deciding their votes, another 87% said the economy and 83% said taxes. 

As for other issues that respondents said had a major impact on how they voted:

• 70% said gun violence 
• 59% said abortion
• 47% said parental involvement in education
• 27% said offshore wind 

Those polled didn’t have strongly positive views on the New Jersey Legislature: 22% had a favorable impression, compared to 25% with an unfavorable impression. Almost half, or 46%, had no opinion on the legislative body at all, and 7% were unsure what the state Legislature is. 

The poll of 974 adults was conducted from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5, with a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Nearly 124,000 New Jerseyans cast ballots in person at polling places during the state’s early voting period between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5. And nearly 407,000 voters returned absentee ballots through the mail and in person by Monday, according to an analysis by Ryan Dubicki, elections researcher for the Associated Press.

Of the 530,000 ballots cast before Election Day, Democrats tended to take advantage of early voting more than Republicans, turning in 320,000 ballots compared to the GOP’s 127,000 and the 82,000 votes cast by voters unaffiliated with either party.