Murphy Wins Re-Election, Claims Victory Over Ciattarelli

Phil Murphy made history. It just took longer than most had expected.

After a wild 24 hours that saw Republican businessman and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli lead Governor Murphy deep into Election night with a lead as large as 1600-plus votes. However the margin was not large enough to make a call, and there were still ballots to be counted. By 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, Murphy had inched past Ciattarelli for a slight lead.

Late Wednesday, the election for governor of New Jersey was officially called with Murphy capturing 1,217,043 votes, or 50.1 percent, according to Politico.

The narrow margin of victory was much closer than expected, with most major polls predicting a landslide victory for Murphy that would have landed anywhere between nine percentage points or more.

Ciattarelli finished a little less than 24,000 votes behind the incumbent governor. The victory is a historic one for Murphy, a Democrat. Democratic governors have had a history of losing their re-election bid in the Garden State. The last Democrat Governor to win re-election in New Jersey was Brendan Byrne in 1977.

According to News 12 New Jersey there are still a number of ballots to be counted in Essex County, which is predominantly Democrat.

The results apparently have not sat well with the Ciattarelli camp.

According to News 12, Stami Williams, a spokeswoman for the Ciattarelli camp called Murphy's victory premature.

Ciattarelli did not publish any comments on social media, but his Twitter has retweeted Williams' remarks.

Governor Murphy was to speak to supporters late Wednesday night.