Democratic Senator Cory Booker won re-election in New Jersey on Tuesday night, November 3, 2026, defeating Republican Justin Murphy to secure a third full six-year term in the United States Senate. The Associated Press called the race at 8:01 p.m. Eastern — one minute after polls closed across the state at 8 p.m. — making it one of the fastest calls of the 2026 midterm night anywhere in America. NBC News also projected Booker the winner. The new term runs to January 2033, and Booker will continue to serve alongside fellow Democratic Senator Andy Kim, who was elected in 2024. Election-night results remain unofficial until New Jersey certifies them.
The count behind the instant call was a landslide. In the Associated Press tally, Booker had 1,149,307 votes to Murphy's 578,102 — roughly 65 per cent to 33 per cent, a margin of more than 570,000 votes — with 3,712 of the state's 6,508 precincts reporting, about 57 per cent of the vote. Two minor candidates trailed far behind: Veronica Fernandez, of the End the Corruption! Party, had 25,719 votes, and Joanne Kuniansky of the Socialist Workers Party had 15,862. Murphy, an attorney and former Tabernacle Township committeeman and deputy mayor, never came within sight of the incumbent in a state that has not elected a Republican senator in more than half a century.
Source: Associated Press election results — New Jersey Senate vote counts and precincts reporting
Thirteen years in the Senate, and counting
Booker, a former mayor of Newark, first entered the Senate in October 2013, winning a special election after the death of Senator Frank Lautenberg. He won his first full term in 2014 and was re-elected in 2020; Tuesday's win is his third full term. The Democratic victory extended the Republicans' losing streak in New Jersey Senate races to 19 straight, the New Jersey Globe reported — the last Republican elected to the Senate from the Garden State was Clifford Case in 1972. In a state of more than nine million people, the Senate seat has now been in Democratic hands, under Booker, for well over a decade, and will stay there into the next decade.
Source: New Jersey Globe, Booker re-elected to U.S. Senate in landslide
Money told the same story as the votes. Booker raised $35.9 million for his campaign through October 14, against just $68,188 for Murphy — 526 times more, the New Jersey Globe calculated. The outcome was so little in doubt that Booker spent part of the campaign travelling to other states to support fellow Democratic candidates rather than defending his own seat at home, and he ran unopposed in New Jersey's June Democratic primary. His campaign made the cost of living its centrepiece, Denville Now reported — the issue that dominated doorsteps in a state where housing, property taxes and utility bills are among the heaviest burdens in America.
Why a safe-seat landslide still matters
A senator's power is not only his vote — it is his seniority, his committee seats and his national profile, and Booker returns to Washington with all three intact at a moment when the fight for the Senate majority is being decided in states like Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. Every safe Democratic seat banked early on election night frees the party's money and attention for those battlegrounds. Booker, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, is also mentioned as a potential candidate in 2028, the Globe noted — a big re-election margin at home is exactly the kind of result that keeps a national profile alive, though Booker himself campaigned this year on New Jersey's cost of living, not on Washington ambitions.
Source: New Jersey Globe, Booker re-elected (2028 mention, national campaigning)
Senate was only the top line of the ballot. Voters across the state also cast ballots on Tuesday for all 12 of New Jersey's U.S. House seats, along with county and local races — the contests that decide who represents towns like Edison, Jersey City and Newark in Washington for the next two years.
What it means for Punjabi and Indian-American readers
New Jersey is one of the heartlands of the Punjabi diaspora in America — Edison and Iselin, Jersey City, and a corridor of towns across Middlesex County are home to some of the largest Punjabi and Indian-American communities in the country, and the New Jersey Turnpike and I-95 freight corridor runs on Punjabi trucking labour. For those readers, Booker's return means continuity in one of the two Senate offices that vote on the issues this community follows most closely in Washington — immigration and visa policy, small-business and trucking regulation, and the cost-of-living pressures, from property taxes to tolls, that his campaign put at its centre. A senator first elected in 2013 is a known quantity in a way a newcomer never is: his offices' record on constituent casework is the practical thing community members will judge.
Source: Denville Now, Booker wins reelection (cost-of-living centrepiece, House races on the same ballot)
What happens next
Counting continues in New Jersey's counties, and the results will be certified through the state's normal canvass in the coming weeks; a margin above half a million votes leaves the outcome in no doubt. Senators elected on November 3 begin their six-year terms on January 3, 2027, when Booker will be sworn in for the term that carries him to January 2033. The bigger question his landslide poses is not about New Jersey at all: with his seat safe for six more years, how much of Booker's time and national fundraising power goes to the Senate fights — and possibly the presidential conversation — of 2028.
Source: Associated Press results; New Jersey Globe (term to 2033, 2028 mention)