Politics & Government

Montclair By The Numbers: A Democratic Stronghold

Nearly 60 percent of registered voters cast a ballot on Tuesday's election and overwhelmingly leaned left.

 

Montclair proved itself once again to be a Democratic bastion on Tuesday.  

Voters leaned overwhelmingly to the left in the 2012 presidential election as nearly 60 percent of the town’s approximate 29,400 registered voters made it to the polls on Tuesday despite lingering power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy. 

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Of the nearly 17,300 voters who turned out, about 83 percent voted for the Democratic presidential ticket: Barack Obama and Joe Biden. President Obama won New Jersey's 14 electoral votes and the White House.  

Those numbers held firm for the U.S. Senate race, where 82 percent of Montclair voters cast a ballot for winning Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez. 

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For the Lower Chamber, Montclair backed Democrat Donald Payne Jr. in the 10th District’s special election, at 86 percent, and regular election, at 23 percent. Payne won both elections, so he will complete the current term in the House vacated by his father, Donald Payne Sr., who died in March, and then will serve a two-year term. 

In the 11th District Congressional race, Democratic challenger John Arvanites received 15 percent of the vote compared to 5 percent for winning Republican incumbent Rodney Frelinghuysen. 

Following the trend, about 54 percent of residents voted for Democratic incumbent Armando Fontoura for Essex County Sheriff, who won an eighth term. 

While the overall turnout was down from 71.7 percent of registered Montclair voters in the 2008 Presidential election,  residents still favored Obama and Biden four years ago with 83 percent of the vote. 

When it came to the two public questions, 81 percent of Montclairions supported the state bonding $750 million for expanding higher education facilities, and 81 percent also favored contributions to be taken from Supreme Court Justices and Superior Court Judges for their employee benefits. 

A full breakdown of how each ward voted can be found in the photo gallery of this article. 


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