GOP looks for upset in New Jersey governor's race as Democrats hope to buck history

New Jersey voters will decide Tuesday whether to make Governor Phil Murphy the first incumbent Democrat to be re-elected since 1977.

The Garden State is reliably blue in presidential and U.S. Senate elections, but its off-year state office election gubernatorial cycle led to GOP victories in 1994 and 2009, the years after Democrats took control of the White House.

Murphy is squaring off against former Republican Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, a moderate Republican who easily won the party's nomination in June by defeating opponents more closely aligned with former President Trump. Ciattarelli has been running for governor for nearly two years and has barnstormed the state in the home stretch, holding dozens of retail-style events.