David Wildstein

I'm just going with my gut feel, which is this is a close race.

You know, at this point, I'm not really paying that much attention to polling because these numbers are all over the place and we're not getting a really good read or at least an adequate read about where they projected electorate will be.

At this point, there's just so much data out there that I'm just going with my my gut feel, which is that this is a close race.

What we're seeing is Republicans becoming increasingly more comfortable with voting in advance of Election Day.

Republicans are now returning vote-by-mail ballots at roughly the same pace as Democrats.

I haven't seen that before.

What we saw in 2024 is Republicans love in-person early voting, and those numbers are good.

Democrats are catching up there.

So the advantage still belongs to the Democrats because they are are more accustomed to voting by mail.

So so 60 plus percent of all the vote by mail ballots that have been sent out have been sent to Democrats.

It's almost a three to one advantage.

Republicans have a long time to get a long way to go before they catch up here.

On the plastic bags, I've seen this in surveys over the last couple of years.

This might be the most grassroots, rank-and-file, unpopular law of the last eight years.

And Cittarelli gets it and he says it.

I don't know that voters are going to make a decision about who they want to be their governor based upon plastic bags.

I think energy costs are hugely important.

People's electricity bills have gone through the roof over the last few months.

And they look at affordability issues and they look at taxes.

And, you know, this is going to make me sound really old, but this is my 14th New Jersey governor's race.