Harris Took Only 11 of Cape May’s 125 Voting Districts
The unofficial results showed Donald Trump winning Cape May County in a landslide over Kamala Harris, with 59% of the ballots and a margin of more than 10,000 votes.
The county’s 125 voting districts produced a results map showing almost solid Republican red, with small pockets of blue giving Harris the majority of votes in 11 districts.
Most notably, the only concentrated support for the Democratic ticket came in the far south of the county, where Harris took Cape May Point, both districts in West Cape May and four of the five voting districts in Cape May City.
Trump’s numbers should not be surprising given the fact that the county has a greater percentage of registered Republicans now than it had at the time of the 2012 presidential election won by Barack Obama. That year, Republican Mitt Romney beat Obama in Cape May County, but only by 4,000 votes.
In 2016 Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the county by 9,696 votes. In 2020 he defeated Joe Biden in the county by 9,217 votes. His margin in 2024 was his largest.
In 2012 unaffiliated and other party registrations totaled 40% of the total registration in the county. By 2024 that number had fallen to 32%. Republican registrations moved from 39% in 2012 to 44% today.
Democrats also grew, from 20% in 2012 to 24% in 2024. The number of voters registered as independent is shrinking, as more residents take up a party banner, with Republicans a full 20 percentage points ahead of Democrats in terms of total registered voters.
The other four districts that went for Harris were Middle Township’s District 8, which contains the historic Black community of Whitesboro, District 2 in Woodbine, Ocean City’s Fourth Ward District 1 and Wildwood’s District 3.
The most significant win for her in terms of percentage of the vote came in tiny Cape May Point, where Harris commanded 69% of the ballots, with 110 votes compared to 45 for Trump.
Harris won in Woodbine’s District 2 and also had an edge over Trump in the borough as a whole, but voters rejected the Democratic Party challenger for a Borough Council seat. Julia Hankerson lost her bid for election to Republicans Joseph Johnson and Barbara Prettyman.
Similarly, the majority votes for Harris in Ocean City’s Fourth Ward District 1, Middle Township District 8 and Wildwood District 3 were bucking a trend that saw all the other 40 districts in the three communities go red.
As of the last posting of the county’s Election Day numbers at 10:13 p.m. Nov. 5, turnout stood at 69% of the county’s registered voters.
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
