Maybe they were disenchanted, sick of Gov. Chris Christie or just looking for a new direction.

An NJ Advance Media analysis of unofficial election results found that 196 towns that backed Christie in the previous race for the governor's office turned their back on his Republican lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, and instead fell in line with Democrat Phil Murphy.

On the flip side, not a single town that voted for Democrat Barbara Buono in the 2013 gubernatorial race changed allegiances to vote for Guadagno this year.

The wave of blue across the state was plenty to give Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive, a comfortable 55.6 percent of the vote, easily topping Guadagno's 42.3 percent. Murphy will take the helm in Trenton in January, as Christie's second and final term expires.

The blue striped towns in the map below are ones that voted for Christie in 2013, but Murphy this year.

A note about the data: These are unofficial results compiled by NJ Advance Media and are subject to change as counties finish counting provisional and mail-in votes and certify results. ** On Nov. 17, Atlantic County released its results and the number of towns that flipped from Christie to Murphy is now 205. The map and charts below have been updated.

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FLIPPING FROM RED TO BLUE

Bergen County is home to 43 of the 196 municipalities that shifted their allegiances from Christie to Murphy.

Most notable are the towns closest to the George Washington Bridge, of Bridgegate fame, like Fort Lee, Edgewater and Palisades Park. They all voted for Christie last election, but emphatically preferred Murphy by margins of 34 percent, 48 percent and 23 percent, respectively.

In addition, towns like Lyndhurst and North Arlington went from Christie to Murphy after they flipped from Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016.

Another surprising twist was in Lakewood. Murphy narrowly won the Ocean County town with 49.6 percent of the vote. By comparison, in the 2016 presidential race, Trump won the solidly Republican town with 74.4 percent of the vote, a nearly 25 percentage point difference.

A week prior to the election, Phil Murphy received an endorsement from the Lakewood Vaad, the township's Orthodox Jewish community leaders.

Out of the 20 counties analyzed (Atlantic County has not provided unofficial results), only Sussex County did not have a municipality flip from Christie to Murphy.

COMPARING 2013 TO 2017

In 2013, Christie handily won a second term with 60.3 percent of the vote to Buono's 38.2 percent. The reversal of party is clear when you compare Tuesday's town-by-town map with the 2013 town-by-town map. The darker the color, the higher the margin of victory.

In the last governor's race, Christie won many of the towns along the I-95 corridor, which is one of the fastest growing areas in the state.

These same towns decidedly voted for Clinton and Obama in the last two presidential races, and Murphy won them easily against Guadagno.

The maps below show just how strongly voters preferred Murphy over his 2013 counterpart, Buono, and how much less they preferred Guadagno compared to Christie. Murphy received a larger share of the vote than Buono in the majority of towns, including ones in solidly Republican counties like Ocean, Monmouth and Sussex.

The darker the blue, the more they came out for Muphy; the darker the gray, the less they preferred Guadagno.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story listed Trenton as a municipality that flipped from Christie to Murphy. In fact, reliably blue Trenton went overwhelmingly for Barbara Buono in 2013 with 74.7 percent of the vote. The town should have been Robbinsville, which did go for Christie in 2013 and turn to Murphy in 2017. The map and charts have been updated.

Carla Astudillo may be reached at castudillo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @carla_astudi. Find her on Facebook.