This Letter reports calculations on electron scattering cross sections for atomic and molecular nitrogen in the respective ground state, together with excited nitrogen molecules in their metastable state A 3 Σ u + . The formalism of Complex Scattering Potential – ionization contribution developed by the authors earlier, is employed first to the well-known target N 2, the most abundant species in Earth's atmosphere. While there are a few electron impact studies on atomic N, there are hardly any investigations on the metastable species N ∗ 2. We report various total cross sections including those of elastic scattering and ionization by electron impact on these targets, at energies E i from ionization threshold to 2000 eV. New results on total (complete) cross sections for atomic N and various cross sections for metastable N ∗ 2 are presented and compared. Our results are in accord with various experimental data on the most studied target N 2. Comparisons are made with the available results on atomic N. The present theoretical results are interpreted in terms of the target properties.