Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill departed her House seat in New Jersey’s 11th congressional district at midnight last night, and Gov. Phil Murphy has now set the date for when her successor will be elected.
In a writ of special election issued today, Murphy ordered that the primary election will be held on Thursday, February 5 and the general election will be held on Thursday, April 16. (Those were the latest dates available for him to choose under the state’s special election laws, presumably a choice made to give election officials and candidates more time to prepare.)
The filing deadline for candidates seeking the Democratic or Republican nominations will arrive on December 1, just ten days from now. Candidates running in either party’s primary will have to collect at least 500 signatures between now and then – a task complicated by the fact that Thanksgiving lands in the middle of the petitioning period.
For independent candidates, the filing deadline will be primary day, February 5, with 250 signatures needed to reach the general election ballot.
Both the primary and general elections will be preceded by in-person early voting periods: a six-day period prior to the primary, January 29 through February 3, and a nine-day period prior to the general, April 6 through April 14. Voters will also, as always, have the option to cast their votes by mail.
The special election schedule means that candidates will only have two and a half months before they face voters for the first time; anticipating that rapid timeline, many candidates have already been running for the seat for weeks or months, some of them since before it was even guaranteed to be open.
The Democratic field currently stands at 11 candidates, many of them prominent names in state and local politics. Given the blue lean of the district – Kamala Harris carried it 53%-44% in 2024, and Sherrill won it 57%-42% in the gubernatorial election earlier this month – it’s likely that the district’s next member of Congress will be decided in the Democratic primary, making February 5 all-important.
Republicans, though, have some hopes of flipping the district red, and have at least one credible candidate, Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, running to do so. Like many special House elections before it, the April 16 general election may also become a nationally watched test of where the national political environment stands ahead of the 2026 midterms.
