Generally speaking, candidates need some combination of the following to win:

• Boots on the ground to get out the vote. This can include support from organizations with significant GOTV operations such as: state, county, and local political parties; unions; and grassroots groups. It can also include inspiring an unusually large number of enthusiastic volunteers or having enough money for a large campaign staff.

• Positive name recognition. This can come from: having held prominent political office or being otherwise famous, having enough money to buy ads/mailers, earned media coverage, or going viral on social media.

• Popular proposals that stand out from the crowd and that people know about.

• Being recommended by people a voter trusts.

Since New Jersey does not have Ranked Choice Voting, voters sometimes choose to vote strategically, balancing how much they like candidates against how likely they think candidates are to win. However, determining who has a realistic chance of winning is difficult, especially in special elections. The metrics below provide some insight (albeit a highly imperfect one) into which candidates have been gaining traction.

In New Jersey, candidates have to get petition signatures to get on the ballot. Number of petition signatures submitted is an early (though not entirely predictive) test of a candidate’s ability to get out the vote and inspire volunteers. Here is how many signatures each candidate received:

• Brendan Gill - 1700

• Analilia Mejía - 1509

• Tom Malinowski - 1501

• Tahesha Way - 1280

• Justin Strickland - 1110

• Anna Lee Williams - 1089

• Jeff Grayzel - 1042

• Zach Beecher - 999

• John Bartlett - 990

• Cammie Croft - 948

• Marc Chaaban - 849 (withdrawn from race)

• Dean Dafis - 719 (withdrawn from race)

• J-L Cauvin - 619

[Last updated 12/18/2025]

The 11th Congressional District covers parts of Morris and Essex County, plus a small part of Passaic County (map). In the last Democratic primary, Morris and Essex delivered similar numbers of votes (p. 16) with Passaic a distant third.

Morris County Democratic Committee

Morris County has one of the (if not the) most small-d democratic conventions in New Jersey. District leaders (two of whom have been elected for each voting district) use Ranked Choice Voting via a secret ballot to select who gets the endorsement. For the special election, committee leaders prioritized giving district leaders more time to learn about candidates even though that meant that the endorsement wouldn’t be finalized in time for the winning candidate to use it as their slogan on the ballot. The nine-member screening committee conducted interviews, then rated candidates on policy know-how, commitment to and understanding of local issues, and the ability to run strong campaigns. Tom Malinowski won the endorsement, earning a plurality on the first ballot (41% to Brendan Gill’s 24%), and consolidating majority support on the 9th ballot (53%). Runners up were Brendan Gill (29%) and Analilia Mejía (18%). This endorsement should reflect the enthusiasm of rank and file party members who then have a strong get out the vote operation.  

Essex County Democratic Committee

Historically, the ECDC endorsement has been decided by party leaders, whose preferred candidate then received preferred placement on the ballot that essentially guaranteed their victory in Essex County and led other candidates to bow out of the race entirely. This started changing in 2024 with the fall of the County Line for primaries and a shift to the ECDC using a secret ballot vote by district leaders to decide endorsements, but it is not yet clear how much power party leaders will attempt to retain over the process. Leadership’s decision to schedule the endorsement convention on December 2nd in order to meet deadlines for adding slogans to ballots prompted an outcry from district leaders about not having enough time to learn about the candidates (disclaimer: several of the voter guide writers signed onto the letter, including Erika, the main writer) and concerns that party leaders were rushing the process to advantage the candidate many county party leaders had already lined up behind. Essex district leaders ultimately voted to endorse Brendan Gill, but only after a vote to delay the convention failed narrowly. Gill won with 132 votes, with 90 committee members voting to abstain (regarded as a vote to not endorse) and other candidates receiving 36 votes. Other than Gill, it is unclear what the results mean in terms of which candidates will get GOTV support from district leaders. Mejía initiated the organizing campaign to encourage abstentions, but Mejía, Dafis, and Beecher all urged their supporters to abstain. Malinowski did not encourage abstentions and received the next most number of votes with seventeen. 

Passaic County Democratic Organization

Relatively few NJ-11th voters are in Passaic County, and unlike in the other two counties, Passaic County district leaders do not get to vote on the endorsement. Instead a screening committee chose to award the endorsement to the two candidates from Passaic County, Tahesha Way and JohnBartlett.

Unions

Unions are major sources of volunteers to get out the vote. Because endorsements are being continuously updated, please see the race’s Wikipedia page for the most current list. For progressives, endorsements by the SEIU, CWA, and Rutgers unions are particularly noteworthy. The SEIU and Rutgers endorsements went to Analilia Mejía, and CWA Local endorsements have gone to Analilia Mejía and Brendan Gill. As of this writing, Brendan Gill has numerous additional union endorsements, and Tom Malinowski, John Bartlett, and Zach Beecher also have at least one.

Major NJ Progressive Groups

Working Families Party, one of the state’s leading progressive organizations, endorsed its former Executive Director, Analilia Mejía. Make the Road NJ, which organizes immigrant and working class communities and does extensive GOTV, also endorsed Analilia Mejía.  Major progressive organization NJ Citizen Action also endorsed Analilia Mejía.

Indivisible and Other Grassroots Groups

NJ-11th is home to several Indivisible groups (including SOMA Action) as well as other grassroots groups. Most appear to be staying out of endorsing in the special election primary, either due to group policies of neutrality, not having enough time to run an endorsement process, or internal splits over whom to support.

Additional Groups

The Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed Analilia Mejía. The Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Tahehsa Way. The Democratic Lt. Governors Association endorsed Tahesha Way and is running a significant independent expenditure campaign to support her. The United Democracy Project, a super PAC associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is running anti-Malinowski ads and texts as of 1/17, though who they are supporting is not yet confirmed. [Update 3/16: DLGA and UDP expenditures were funded overwhelmingly by the same donors].

Notable Political Figures*

While endorsements by high profile political figures do not themselves necessarily get out the vote, they can steer supporters toward a chosen candidate, especially in low information races. Brendan Gill has by far the most endorsements, including that of Governor Phil Murphy. Notable progressive endorsers are: Sen. Andy Kim (endorsing Tom Malinowski), Sen. Bernie Sanders (endorsing Analilia Mejía), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (endorsing Analilia Mejía), and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (endorsing Analilia Mejía). Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill has said she will not be endorsing. 

*Note: While there are many political figures, the ones listed here are the ones who have appeared on our ballots and whom voters might have formed an opinion about. Please check Wikipedia for the most up-to-date list of all endorsements.

[Last updated 1/28/2026. Analysis reflects Erika’s opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.]

Political campaigns have become staggeringly expensive. On average, successful U.S House candidates spend $1.5 million - $3 million, with the threshold for running a "credible" campaign in the quarter to half-a-million dollar range. This is a significant deterrent to candidates who may do an excellent job legislating, but who are not connected to wealthy social networks or favored by large donors. Once in office, representatives are still expected to spend a significant portion of their day fundraising, which detracts from legislative work, advantages candidates who come from wealthier social networks, and biases the pool of people whose concerns representatives hear and are incentivized to respond to.

While national level policies like restricting political donations are one way to address this, we are not helpless in their absence. The mechanisms by which money impacts politics are more complex and open to challenge than many people realize. We as activists have the power to act directly to reduce how useful money is in winning congressional races. Part of the goal of SOMA Action's voter guide is to create and lift up better sources of information that allow voters to confidently connect their values with their vote and ignore the one-sided, truth-stretching ads and mailers that suck up the largest portions of campaign budgets. Similarly, the more that activists around the district build grassroots GOTV operations that candidates access by talking to and winning over activists instead of spending lots of money, the less relevant money becomes. If we don't want access to politics to be restricted to only people who can pay, then the infrastructure for doing political campaigns in our towns needs to be a free public good.

For the foreseeable future, however, money matters. Below are pie charts for what money has been raised (or in the case of independent expenditures, spent) to promote candidates. This is based on reports from the FEC as of January 16th, 2026. Justin Strickland did not file his paperwork in time to be included. All information is from the FEC’s website and calculations are available here.

Image|FEC Pie charts|https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HSJXVvkbYmFssCRBMcvgJ0Hp6YJRm7R4yK25mdZ4jKM/edit?gid=1986060583#gid=1986060583

There are several different ways to interpret these numbers, much of which depends on your theories about why and how money influences campaigns.

Possibility #1: Money matters because it lets candidates spends a lot on ads and fliers (predominantly) that persuade people to vote for them

One possibility is that fliers and ads persuade voters to support a candidate, and having a lot of money to pump them out advantages the candidate. If this is the case, then Tahesha Way has a significant lead with over $2 million going into ubiquitous fliers and ads, mostly by outside groups. Tom Malinowski also has over $1.5 million, but this is counterbalanced by an almost equal amount spent on negative advertising against him by outside groups (predominantly AIPAC). Brendan Gill is third by a significant margin.

However, it’s not clear how straightforward the relationship between spending money and winning elections is. The most recent cautionary tale is the $40 million spent to promote Sean Spiller in the 2024 Gubernatorial Primary only to have him finish fifth place. While there is definitely a correlation between fundraising and winning, it is possible that something else explains the relationship.

Possibility #2: Fundraising is a signal that someone is a “serious candidate”

Because NJ does not have Ranked Choice Voting, voters and media often look for signs of who the “serious candidates” are and ignore the rest. In this scenario, ads/fliers and fundraising totals might not be persuasive in and of themselves, but instead are a signal to voters regarding which candidates to learn more about and which to dismiss as “also rans.” This could be particularly impactful if voters feel there are too many candidates to evaluate them all.

In this scenario, money matters because we have collectively agreed to use it as a screening mechanism to narrow down the field. Theoretically, we could just as easily have picked something else, but currently this is how the game is played, and competent candidates will work their hardest to win whatever competition is put in front of them, no matter how arbitrary. Raising money (or persuading outside groups to spend money) in this scenario would be a proxy for how good a campaign is in general at doing the things that are needed to win.

In an added twist, spending against a candidate would actually count in their favor, as it would signal to voters that other political players think the candidate is a serious enough threat to attack.

If this is the case, then several tiers of candidates emerge, which can be cross checked by other “serious candidate” signals like the number of fliers sent out (measured by counting the number in my mailbox from Nov-Jan 28th):

“Serious candidate” signal tiers

• Tier 1: Malinowski ($3 million for and against, 12 fliers - 6 pro and 6 against) and Way ($2.1 million, 9 fliers)

• Tier 2: Gill ($840K, 4 fliers), Mejía ($605K, 4 fliers) 

• Tier 3*: Beecher ($505K, 4 fliers), Bartlett ($466K, but only 1 flier, may be spending on TV ads), Grayzel (428K, 3 fliers), Croft (373K, 4 fliers)

• Tier 4: Strickland (Failed to report funding, 1 flier), Cauvin ($100K, 0 fliers), Williams ($26K, 0 fliers)

*Tier 3 is close to Tier 2 and the cutoff isn’t super precise

Possibility #3: Fundraising is a proxy for voter enthusiasm

In this scenario, what matters wouldn’t be so much the amount of money overall raised, but what those numbers mean regarding how enthusiastic voters in the district are about a particular candidate. In this scenario, external expenditures are largely irrelevant, and out-of-state donations matter mainly to the extent that they signal that people will phonebank in. What would really matter in this case would be the number of people in district who donate, and to a lesser extent the number of people elsewhere in NJ who might conceivably show up to canvass or call their in-district friends.

If this scenario is true, then a slightly different picture emerges, complicated by the fact that the location of people who donate under $200 cumulatively is not reported publicly by the FEC. While campaigns report their overall total for small dollar donations, we normally have no idea where in the country they come from or how many people they represent. If a candidate receives $1000 in small dollar donations, that could be anything from 6 voters out-of-state to 10,000 voters in-district depending on the average donation amount and location.

Excluding everything except in-state individual donations and small dollar donations yields the following tiers:

• Tier 1: Malinowski ($685K), Gill ($494K)

• Tier 2: Way ($238K), Mejía ($236K)

• Tier 3*: Beecher ($208K), Bartlett ($192K), Grayzel ($182K)

• Tier 4: Croft ($58K), Cauvin ($58K), Williams ($20K)

*Tier 3 is close to Tier 2 and the cutoff isn’t super precise

We can also look directly at the number of donors in the district as a proxy for enthusiasm, with the caveat that we can only see who contributed $200 or more cumulatively, and the small donor numbers likely conceal many more:

• Tier 1: Malinowski (148 donors), Gill (132 donors)

• Tier 2: Grayzel (86 donors), Mejia (57 donors), and Bartlett (53 donors)

• Tier 3: Way (34 donors), Beecher (23 donors)

• Tier 4: Croft (9 donors), Williams (4 donors), Cauvin (4 donors)

The real wildcard is small dollar donors. It is possible that hidden in these numbers is a swell of enthusiasm in-district that will lead to a number of votes disproportionate to other fundraising indicators. If such a thing were to happen, here are the candidates to keep an eye on:

• Tier 1: Mejía ($161K), Beecher ($122K) 

• Tier 2: Malinowski ($85K), Way($59K)

• Tier 3: Cauvin ($43K), Croft ($34K), Grayzel ($25K)

• Tier 4: Gill ($15K), Bartlett ($15K), Williams ($9K)

Which is the right way to interpret this?

That’s unknown. What we can see, however, is that Tom Malinowski places first or second under all scenarios. How competitive Tahesha Way and Brendan Gill are is much more sensitive to assumptions, but they are generally in the first or second tiers, with occasional drops lower. Analilia Mejía shows up pretty consistently in the second tier with a significant wildcard of having raised the most in unpredictable small dollar donations. There is an outside chance of a surprise from Zach Beecher, who runs just under Mejía in most categories. No other candidates place above the third tier more than once.

Polling in special elections is extremely difficult and should be interpreted with significant caution. Polls available in this race:

• Internal poll from Malinowski’s campaign conducted Nov 19-23 (before candidates had had a chance to campaign).