Even though the majority of New Jersey’s registered voters are not affiliated with any political party, state election guidelines allow them to participate in the presidential primaries on Tuesday.

Elections officials say New Jersey has 4.8 million registered voters, including 1,170,644 Democrats and 874,752 Republicans. Another 1,634 voters are members of the Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, Reform or U.S. Constitution parties; they are not eligible to vote Tuesday.

The majority of New Jersey’s electorate  nearly 2.8 million people  are classified as unaffiliated, but state election rules allow unaffiliated voters to visit their local polling place and ask for the ballot of their preferred party.

Those registered as unaffiliated will be permitted to cast ballots. But once an unaffiliated voter casts a ballot for a candidate in one of the major political parties, the affiliation on voter rolls automatically changes to the party for which the vote was cast.