| Turnout | 85.52%[1] ( | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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County Results
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The1940 United States presidential election in New Jersey took place on November 5, 1940. All contemporary 48 states were part of the1940 United States presidential election. Voters chose 16 electors to theElectoral College, which selected thepresident andvice president.
New Jersey was won by theDemocratic nominees, incumbentPresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt ofNew York and his running mateSecretary of AgricultureHenry A. Wallace ofIowa. Roosevelt and Wallace defeated theRepublican nominees, corporate lawyerWendell Willkie ofNew York and his running mateSenate Minority LeaderCharles L. McNary ofOregon.
Roosevelt narrowly carried New Jersey with 51.55 percent of the vote to Willkie's 47.93 percent, a margin of 3.62 percent.[2] Reflecting the closeness of the statewide result, Roosevelt and Willkie virtually split the state's 21 counties: Roosevelt won 11 counties to Willkie's ten. Roosevelt edged out Willkie statewide with decisive victories in some of the most heavily populated parts of the state, while keeping the results close in heavily populated counties that he lost.
InNorth Jersey, Roosevelt maintained his dominance in heavily populatedHudson County, part of theNew York metropolitan area where theNew Deal Coalition was very strong, breaking 60% of the vote in the county for the third election in a row. Roosevelt also won heavily populatedMiddlesex County with more than 60% of the vote, along with majorities inMercer County,Passaic County, and ruralWarren County. Willkie won the remaining counties of North Jersey, breaking sixty percent of the vote inBergen County andMorris County.
Roosevelt performed much more strongly overall inSouth Jersey, winning majorities in 6 out of 8 of the southernmost counties in the state; his strongest county win there was urbanCamden County, where he broke 60% of the vote. In South Jersey, Willkie won only ruralCape May County. Besides his victories in North Jersey, Willkie also wonMonmouth County andOcean County in the central portion of the state.
New Jersey by 1940 had become a closely dividedswing state with a Republican lean, and its results in 1940 adhered to that pattern. Roosevelt had carried the state in the midst of both of his preceding nationwide landslides, although only by a very narrow margin in1932. As Roosevelt decisively won re-election to an unprecedented third term, carrying 38 out of 48 states, his narrow margin of victory in New Jersey made the state about 6 points more Republican than the national average.
| 1940 United States presidential election in New Jersey | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | Percentage | Electoral votes | |
| Democratic | Franklin D. Roosevelt (incumbent) | 1,016,808 | 51.55% | 16 | |
| Republican | Wendell Willkie | 945,475 | 47.93% | 0 | |
| Communist | Earl Browder | 6,508 | 0.33% | 0 | |
| Socialist | Norman Thomas | 2,433 | 0.12% | 0 | |
| National Prohibition | Roger Babson | 873 | 0.04% | 0 | |
| Socialist Labor | John W. Aiken | 455 | 0.02% | 0 | |
| Totals | 1,974,214 | 100.0% | 16 | ||
| County | Franklin D. Roosevelt[3] Democratic | Wendell Willkie[3] Republican | Earl Browder[3] Communist | Norman Thomas[3] Socialist | Roger Babson[3] National Prohibition | John W. Aiken[3] Socialist Labor | Margin | Total votes cast | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | ||
| Atlantic | 36,155 | 54.13% | 30,551 | 45.74% | 26 | 0.04% | 33 | 0.05% | 28 | 0.04% | 5 | 0.01% | 5,604 | 8.39% | 66,798 |
| Bergen | 76,541 | 36.65% | 131,588 | 63.01% | 190 | 0.09% | 379 | 0.18% | 58 | 0.03% | 67 | 0.03% | -55,047 | -26.36% | 208,823 |
| Burlington | 26,574 | 55.50% | 21,161 | 44.20% | 13 | 0.03% | 71 | 0.15% | 53 | 0.11% | 6 | 0.01% | 5,413 | 11.31% | 47,878 |
| Camden | 84,837 | 65.81% | 43,480 | 33.73% | 93 | 0.07% | 337 | 0.26% | 158 | 0.12% | 14 | 0.01% | 41,357 | 32.08% | 128,919 |
| Cape May | 8,485 | 47.29% | 9,429 | 52.55% | 4 | 0.02% | 10 | 0.06% | 16 | 0.09% | 0 | 0.00% | -944 | -5.26% | 17,944 |
| Cumberland | 19,251 | 53.95% | 16,322 | 45.75% | 13 | 0.04% | 23 | 0.06% | 58 | 0.16% | 13 | 0.04% | 2,929 | 8.21% | 35,680 |
| Essex | 154,363 | 44.87% | 182,124 | 52.94% | 6,556 | 1.91% | 765 | 0.22% | 139 | 0.04% | 87 | 0.03% | -27,761 | -8.07% | 344,034 |
| Gloucester | 20,284 | 53.22% | 17,674 | 46.38% | 11 | 0.03% | 51 | 0.13% | 82 | 0.22% | 9 | 0.02% | 2,610 | 6.85% | 38,111 |
| Hudson | 208,429 | 65.85% | 107,552 | 33.98% | 255 | 0.08% | 237 | 0.07% | 9 | 0.00% | 26 | 0.01% | 100,877 | 31.87% | 316,508 |
| Hunterdon | 7,872 | 43.25% | 10,284 | 56.50% | 2 | 0.01% | 27 | 0.15% | 12 | 0.07% | 6 | 0.03% | -2,412 | -13.25% | 18,203 |
| Mercer | 50,121 | 57.26% | 37,190 | 42.49% | 119 | 0.14% | 85 | 0.10% | 14 | 0.02% | 4 | 0.00% | 12,931 | 14.77% | 87,533 |
| Middlesex | 67,140 | 61.59% | 41,709 | 38.26% | 69 | 0.06% | 23 | 0.02% | 6 | 0.01% | 66 | 0.06% | 25,431 | 23.33% | 109,013 |
| Monmouth | 36,298 | 42.18% | 49,675 | 57.73% | 16 | 0.02% | 29 | 0.03% | 23 | 0.03% | 6 | 0.01% | -13,377 | -15.55% | 86,047 |
| Morris | 24,698 | 38.23% | 39,720 | 61.47% | 25 | 0.04% | 117 | 0.18% | 47 | 0.07% | 5 | 0.01% | -15,022 | -23.25% | 64,612 |
| Ocean | 8,762 | 39.50% | 13,394 | 60.38% | 18 | 0.08% | 6 | 0.03% | 2 | 0.01% | 0 | 0.00% | -4,632 | -20.88% | 22,182 |
| Passaic | 69,880 | 51.42% | 65,523 | 48.21% | 231 | 0.17% | 184 | 0.14% | 31 | 0.02% | 58 | 0.04% | 4,357 | 3.21% | 135,907 |
| Salem | 12,244 | 59.92% | 8,132 | 39.80% | 15 | 0.07% | 16 | 0.08% | 26 | 0.13% | 0 | 0.00% | 4,112 | 20.12% | 20,433 |
| Somerset | 16,490 | 44.86% | 20,169 | 54.87% | 36 | 0.10% | 40 | 0.11% | 10 | 0.03% | 10 | 0.03% | -3,679 | -10.01% | 36,755 |
| Sussex | 6,314 | 42.14% | 8,642 | 57.67% | 4 | 0.03% | 7 | 0.05% | 16 | 0.11% | 1 | 0.01% | -2,328 | -15.54% | 14,984 |
| Union | 70,737 | 46.45% | 79,962 | 52.50% | 1,116 | 0.73% | 369 | 0.24% | 52 | 0.03% | 60 | 0.04% | -9,225 | -6.06% | 152,296 |
| Warren | 10,929 | 50.69% | 10,595 | 49.14% | 8 | 0.04% | 14 | 0.06% | 12 | 0.06% | 3 | 0.01% | 334 | 1.55% | 21,561 |
| Totals | 1,016,404 | 51.48% | 944,876 | 47.86% | 8,814 | 0.45% | 2,823 | 0.14% | 851 | 0.04% | 446 | 0.02% | 71,528 | 3.62% | 1,974,214 |