The stats don’t lie.

But what they do is confirm a political upheaval in the suburbs.

There are now more registered Democrats than Republicans in congressional districts 7 and 11, which cover a huge chunk of central and northern New Jersey. That’s good news for first-term incumbents
Tom Malinowski and Mikie Sherrill.

The updated April figures from the state Division of Elections show that in CD-7. there are now 169,597 Democrats and 168,776 Republicans.

And in District 11, there are 175,639 Dems and 175,278 Republicans.

As you can see, the Democrats’ margin in both districts is not huge – less than 1,000 voters in each. But that’s really not the point.

The trend tells the story.

Just a year ago, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by about 5,000 in CD-7 and 4,000 in CD-11.

And if you go back three congressional election cycles to April, 2014, the GOP’s margin was about 29,000 in the 7th and 24,000 in the 11th.

Obviously, registration is one thing; actually voting is another.

But as the numbers reveal, Democrats have been chipping away at the Republicans’ lead literally month-by-month for some time.

Traditional politikking is in hiatus these days, but assuming normalcy eventuallty rerturns, that’s the challenge for Republican candidates Tom Kean Jr. in CD-7 and Rosemary Becchi in CD-11.

Both GOP candidates suggest incumbents Malinowski and Sherrill are liberals trying to masquerade as centrists. And they note – correctly – that the incumbents seldom deviate from supporting the party line.
Their support for impeachment was evidence of that.

But this will be an election where President Trump seems destined to loom larger than any congressional vote – even one as consequential as impeachment.

Why people register the way they do is up to them, but it’s probably a given district voters are not registering as Democrats because they like Donald Trump’s Republican party.