By Jonathan D. Salant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

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Labor Day weekend is the traditional start of the fall campaign season, when voters turn their attention from beaches to ballots.

So now's the time to give you a look at what's in store for us this fall, New Jersey. And in President Donald Trump's midterm test, this campaign season could be a doozy.

New Jersey's senior U.S. senator, Robert Menendez, is facing a big challenge from Republican Bob Hugin. We're sure you've already seen the campaign commercials. Expect them to get pushed into a higher and nastier gear this fall.

There are also races for all 12 New Jersey House seats, and several could flip from Republican to Democratic — something that would have a big impact on whether the full House turns blue.

While he won't be on the ballot again until 2020, Trump looms large this campaign season. Polls show that Americans are viewing this fall's congressional races as a referendum on the president.

Here are 17 things you need to know about the fall campaign in Jersey.

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President Donald Trump speaks at a dinner meeting with business leaders on Aug. 7 at his Bedminster golf club. (AP Photo | Carolyn Kaster)

1. Will voters deliver a verdict on the Trump presidency?

Six out of 10 U.S. voters said that they'll be casting ballots for or against Trump in the midterm congressional races, according to a Pew Research Center survey released in June.

Even as a record 60 percent of Americans disapproved of Trump's job performance in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, Republicans have voted in lock-step with the president. Every GOP senator has backed the president at least three-fourths of the time, except for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, whose Trump support score was 74 percent, according to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.

Only three of 236 House Republicans backed him less than 70 percent of the time.

Trump's legislative priorities proved to be unpopular with the public, according to a recent Fox News poll.

More than half of Americans, 51 percent, supported the Affordable Care Act, which Trump tried to repeal and replace. Only 40 percent backed his tax bill, which limited New Jersey's property tax breaks while giving most of its benefits to corporations and wealthy Americans.

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President Donald Trump speaks during a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House in August. (AP Photo | Alex Brandon)

2. Why should Trump fear Democrats taking control?

Trump, of course, knows his legislative priorities likely would be blocked by a Democratic Congress.

But there's much more than that. If Democrats control the show, they can also hold hearings, wield subpoena power, and make life far more uncomfortable for a president already beset by the Russia investigation and other scandals.

Few Democrats are using the "I-word" — impeachment — so far, but if the investigations bring bad news for the president, that's more likely if the House flips.

As an insurance policy, the president has campaigned and raised money for GOP candidates, including for Rep. Tom MacArthur at his Bedminster golf club, and plans to continue doing so this fall.

His rhetoric already is heating up. Last week, he warned Christian conservatives that Democratic majorities in Congress would "overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently."

And at a campaign-style rally in Indiana Thursday, he proclaimed that the Democratic Party was "held hostage by left-wing haters, angry mobs, deep-state radicals, establishment cronies and their fake-news allies."

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3. What usually happens to the party in the White House during midterms?

Usually, presidents don't fare so well in midterm tests.

The Democratic Party gained nine House seats in 1934, the first midterm election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Then you had to wait six decades to see it happen again, when Democrats picked up House seats in 1998, as Republicans impeached Democratic President Bill Clinton, and Republicans increased their majority under Republican President George W. Bush in 2002, the first election after 9/11.

"We all know the challenging nature of history in the midterm election cycle," said Bill Stepien, the White House political director and Chris Christie's former top political adviser. "The opposing party historically gains seats in midterm elections. That being said, we think the president has put his party in position to defy those odds."

Trump had a 42 percent job approval rating in the last CNN poll and 36 percent in the ABC/Post survey. The last two chief executives with approval ratings below 50 percent at this point in their presidencies, Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010, both saw their party lose control of the House. Clinton's Democrats lost the Senate as well.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., joined by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., left, talks to reporters at the Capitol in June. (AP Photo | J. Scott Applewhite)

4. Will Democrats take back the House?

It's likely. They need 23 seats to win back the majority they lost in 2010, the first midterm election under Obama.

Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight on Friday put the chances of a Democratic takeover at 3 in 4, or 75 percent. Inside Elections, a Washington-based publication that tracks House races, had 76 Republican-held districts in play, including 22 of them rated as either tossups or leaning Democratic. Four of them were in New Jersey.

Inside Elections listed only 10 House Democratic districts possibly at risk, none of them in the Garden State.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined at left by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., at the Capitol in August. (AP Photo | J. Scott Applewhite)

5. Will Democrats take back the Senate?

This is much less likely, even though the Democrats need to pick up only two Republican-held seats to do so.

That's because the Democrats must defend 10 seats in states that Trump carried in 2016, and the Cook Political Report, which also tracks Senate races from Washington, listed five of them as tossup races and one where the incumbent held a slight advantage.

Meanwhile, just nine Senate GOP-held seats will be on the ballot, with only three of them considered tossups. Republicans were slight favorites in a fourth.

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6. How does New Jersey figure into all of this?

New Jersey could have a big impact on the national elections.

Democrats need to gain 23 seats to win the House, and have targeted four GOP-held districts in New Jersey to help them reach that goal. So the Garden State is at the center of this battle.

As for the Senate, while Menendez is strongly favored to win re-election by both Cook and Inside Elections, the last thing that Democrats need is a concern about him retaining his seat.

Any chance of a Democratic Senate takeover evaporates if he loses.

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Senate candidates Bob Hugin, left, and Robert Menendez, right.

7. So what's happening in N.J. Senate race between Menendez and Hugin?

Republicans have nominated former Celgene Corp. executive Bob Hugin, who already has pumped $15.5 million of his own money into his campaign.

Much of that money has gone for television commercials that have aired for months and remind voters that Menendez was "severely admonished" by the Senate Ethics Committee after a jury failed to convict only the 12th U.S. senator ever to be indicted.

The most recent Senate poll, by Quinnipiac University in August, had incumbent Democrat Menendez ahead of Republican Hugin, 43 percent to 36 percent. That's down from 17 points in March.

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8. What is Hugin's line of attack?

The Quinnipiac poll said that government ethics was the No. 1 issue, and Hugin knows it. He has focused on Menendez's federal indictment and the fact that the incumbent was "severely admonished" by the Senate Ethics Committee.

Federal prosecutors' first attempt to try Menendez ended in a mistrial, and they dropped the remaining charges after the senator was acquitted on several counts by the trial judge. The ethics committee rebuke was the mildest sanction Menendez could have received, a letter rather than a formal reprimand on the Senate floor.

Even so, the bipartisan committee said Menendez's actions "violated Senate rules, federal law, and applicable standards of conduct."

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9. What is Menendez's line of attack?

Menendez has tried to throw the ethics issue back at Hugin.

Celgene under Hugin paid $280 million to settle charges that it pushed drugs for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and that it submitted false claims to Medicare.

The company spent more money than ever before as it lobbied against legislation that could speed up a generic alternative to its Revlimid cancer drug, and was called out by Trump for it.

And Hugin tried to block women from joining the Princeton University eating club he was president of.

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10. Which outside groups are spending big in Senate race?

Three super political action committees already are on the air.

Integrity NJ, formed by officials with ties to former Gov. Chris Christie, is behind Hugin. The PAC is chaired by Phil Cox, who was executive director of the Republican Governors Association when Christie was chairman, and then ran America Leads, the super PAC that supported Christie's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

The executive director, Pete Sheridan, currently serves as Christie's spokesman and is a former executive director of the New Jersey Republican Party.

The PAC spent $2.2 million on commercials through Aug. 16, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Its biggest donor is William Scully, a major Celgene stockholder. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady was a $100,000 donor. Brady served as an interim U.S. senator from New Jersey in 1982 after Harrison Williams resigned, but didn't seek a full term.

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Two other super PACs are running ads attacking Hugin's tenure at Celgene.

Patients for Affordable Drugs Now was founded David Mitchell, who formerly worked for a Democratic consulting firm and now serves as president of Patients for Affordable Drugs, an advocacy group trying to lower prices. The group has spent $1.5 million through Aug. 3.

The PAC has received funding through former hedge fund executive John Arnold and his wife Laura. The Arnolds' family foundation conducts research and offers proposals on several issues, including drug prices.

Leadership Alliance NJ, which spent $1.2 million through Aug. 31, is run by veteran Democratic consultant Julie Roginsky. The group has yet to disclose its donors.

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Also on Menendez's side, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the campaign are jointly spending more than $100,000 on ads. The commercials are charged at the lower rate that candidates pay, not at the higher rate for outside groups like the DSCC would pay on its own.

“The Menendez campaign wisely held their resources until their ads would have maximum impact in the closing weeks of the election," DSCC spokesman David Bergstein said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee saw it differently.

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11. If Hugin wins, will he become a Republican hero?

The last time New Jersey voters elected a Republican to represent them in the U.S. Senate, gasoline cost 55 cents a gallon and disco was on the rise. That was in 1972. The GOP has lost every election since then.

If Hugin wins amid the predicted anti-Trump "blue wave" and breaks the long Jersey losing streak, he instantly would get national attention.

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12. So which New Jersey congressional seats are most likely to flip to the Dems?

Say goodbye to two longtime Republican House members: Frank LoBiondo, in the 2nd District in south Jersey, and Rodney Frelinghuysen in the 11th in north Jersey.

Both were elected to the House in the 1994 Republican revolution that ended 40 years of Democratic control of the chamber. And both are retiring.

Democrats are favored to win their districts by both Inside Elections and the Cook Political Report.

The Democratic candidate in the 2nd District, state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, was given an 88 percent chance of victory by FiveThirtyEight.

His Republican challenger, Seth Grossman, lost the backing of the National Republican Congressional Committee after a report that he shared a white supremacist website post calling blacks a "threat to all who cross their paths."

Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, is running against state Assemblyman Jay Webber, R-Morris, who hosted Vice President Mike Pence at a fundraiser, an indication that national Republicans believe the seat is very much in play. Silver gave Sherrill a 73 percent chance of prevailing.

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13. Which N.J. House Republicans are also in danger of losing?

Two of New Jersey's three Republican incumbents, MacArthur, R-3rd Dist., and Leonard Lance, R-7th Dist., were given no better than 50-50 chances to win re-election in November, according to the Cook Political Report.

Only Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist., is considered safe.

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A New Jersey Transit train stops at Oradell station as Rep. Josh Gottheimer announces Gateway legislation. (Larry Higgs | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

14. Are there any Democrats in danger of losing?

Believe it or not, the only Democrat who could be even remotely in danger would be Menendez, thanks to Hugin's checkbook and the incumbent's ethical problems.

On paper, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, the first Democrat to represent the 5th Congressional District in 85 years, should be vulnerable. That was before he raised $5.2 million through June 30, more than all but five other House members, according to FEC data. Silver gave him a 95 percent chance of victory.

Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by Christian Science Monitor that the 5th District was one of a handful where Republicans should go on offense. But there is no indication that the House GOP's political committee will invest in the campaign of Republican nominee John McCann.

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15. What outside groups are pumping money into N.J. House races?

The super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the Congressional Leadership Fund, has reserved $3.5 million in television time on behalf of MacArthur and Lance, and has opened field offices in their districts.

House Majority PAC, which is affiliated with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, has run digital ads to help Sherrill and recently began running TV ads on behalf of both Kim and Malinowski. The super PAC said it would spend $435,000 in MacArthur's district and $465,000 in Lance's.

And the Democratic National Committee recently sent out a fundraising email over the signature of political director Amanda Brown Lierman, a West Orange native, seeing donations for five House Democratic challengers, including Kim.

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16. What about the independents?

These third-party candidates will be on the general election ballot for U.S. Senate:

Tricia Flanagan, New Day NJ, who is involved with health care policy and is running to the right of Hugin politically, including opposing abortion rights.

Madelyn Hoffman, Green Party, executive director of New Jersey Peace Action.

Kevin Kimple, Make it Simple, a small business owner.

Natalie Lynn Rivera, For the People

Murray Sabrin, Libertarian Party, a Ramapo College finance professor who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate as a Republican in 2000, 2008 and 2014, and was the Libertarian Party gubernatorial nominee in 1997, when he became the first third-party candidate who raised enough money to qualify for matching funds and a spot in televised debates.

Hank Schroeder, Economic Growth, who also has run for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state Assembly and governor as an independent.

There are 25 third-party candidates running in the 12 House races. Eight of them are from the Libertarian Party.

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17. When can I vote?

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 6. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The deadline to register is Oct. 16.

Absentee ballot applications must be submitted by Oct. 30 if they are mailed in. You can pick up an absentee ballot in person until 3 p.m. Nov. 5.

Mailed ballots must be postmarked no later than Nov. 6 and must be received by the county Board of Elections no later than 48 hours after the polls close. Absentee ballots also can be delivered in person by the time the polls close on Election Day.

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.