New Jersey · Senate

Who is running?

Cory Booker (Democratic), Justin Murphy (Republican), Joanne Kuniansky (Socialist), Veronica Fernandez (no party recorded).

The race, in brief

Democratic incumbent Cory Booker, a U.S. senator since 2013, is seeking a third full term in New Jersey. The text notes that Republicans have not won a Senate election in the state since 1972. It gives no presidential results for the state. The state profile is on file in the facts.

Booker ran unopposed in the June 2 Democratic primary, receiving 587,980 votes. The Republican nominee is Justin Murphy, a former deputy mayor of Tabernacle Township described as a perennial candidate, who won a four-way primary with 82,272 votes (33.4% in the results table, 33.3% in the lead) over state trooper Richard Tabor (29.2%), former News 12 reporter Alex Zdan (26.8%) and physician Robert Lebovics (10.7%). Murphy had carried only the Mercer County Republican convention. Veronica Fernandez (End the Corruption!), Joanne Kuniansky (Socialist Workers Party) and write-in Eduardo Castillo are also running.

As of June 30, 2026 Booker had raised $33,504,255 with $23,060,940 on hand; Murphy had raised $27,316 with $123 on hand. All ten raters listed, from The Cook Political Report (September 23, 2026) to Split Ticket (September 25, 2026), put the race at D. The text lists no general-election polls.

The facts hold no model forecast for this race, so nothing can be reported from the model.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast is empty: no model nowcast or election-day forecast is on file.; The text lists no general-election polls.; No presidential or previous Senate results are given as numbers.; facts.candidates marks Booker as incumbent: false, although the text names him the incumbent.; Ratings are given only as 'D' with no Lean/Likely/Safe.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 98ead25189e6; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Cory A. Booker (Democrat), in this chamber since 2013, 3 terms, class 2 (term ends 2027). Committees: Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship; Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

Andy Kim (Democrat), in this chamber since 2024, 2 terms, class 1 (term ends 2031). Committees: Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Senate Special Committee on Aging.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 14, 2026; $135 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 9.3 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Has anyone polled it?

We hold no published poll of this general election. A search of aggregators, pollster releases, university polls and local news on 2 October found none (primary polls exist for some races and are not this contest). That is what we could find, not proof that no poll has been conducted. When one is published it enters the poll model and this page gains a nowcast.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Margins and probabilities are for Cory Booker. With no polls, this is the fundamentals forecast alone: the state's own past results for this office and for president, its demographics, economy, religion and government employment, the candidates' incumbency, experience and money, and the national environment for this midterm.

How wide is the range?

In 8 of 10 simulations the margin falls between +6 and +40 points. The spread is the fundamentals model's own measured error (sd 13.4 points), not a guess: a forecast without polls is uncertain and is shown that way.

How accurate is a fundamentals-only forecast?

Tested on past races without letting it see them: across 175 Senate and governor races in 2016-2022 it missed the final margin by 8.3 points on average, and by 6.7 points across 35 races in 2024. Our poll-based forecast missed by 5.4 on the same races. Most races it is used for here are lopsided enough that an 8-point miss would not change the winner.

Where did every number come from?

Run 981d6733, single_race_latent/0.8.1, as of 2026-10-01 23:02 UTC, basis: ground-up prior only, no polls.