Election night scrambled the assumptions that had shaped two of the region’s most closely watched races.

Polls pointed to a competitive governor’s race in New Jersey and a potentially splintered mayoral electorate in New York City. Instead, both contests broke sharply away from conservative candidates and toward Democrats.

In New Jersey, some last-minute polling showed the race within a few points. In the end, Jack Ciattarelli, who ran as a Trump Republican, significantly underperformed compared to polls as well as his performance in 2021, when he came within 3 points of beating then-incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy.

Democrat Mikie Sherrill closed the night with a 13-point lead, far outpacing expectations with an anti-Trump agenda in a state Republicans believed was trending right.

And in

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