Lots of commentators will no doubt spend days scrutinizing the tea leaves, pontificating on the implications (or total irrelevance) of several races.
I won't get into any pointless discussions over whether or not this election was or was not a referendum on Obama, or what, if any, importance these races have for predicting 2010's midterm contests.
But there are a few things I'd like to point out:
Republican comeback in Virginia
- Republican Bob McDonnell defeated the hapless Creigh Deeds by 18 points in the biggest electoral victory for the Virginia GOP in a decade. McDonnell won Virginia with the highest percentage of the vote for a governor since 1961 -- and for any GOP gubernatorial candidate, ever.
- Republicans swept all of Virginia's statewide races.
- The GOP unseated 8 Democratic incumbents in the Virginia General Assembly.
Exit polling: Independents back GOP
- In both the Virginia and New Jersey governor's races, independent voters -- whose support enabled Barack Obama's victory in 2008 -- have switched sides, backing the Republican candidates by an astounding 2:1 margin. (65% of independents backed McDonnell, 34% voted for Deeds; 60% of independents voted for Christie, just 30% for Corzine).
- This is due to many factors -- mostly concern over the economy -- but one thing is certain: Negative. Campaigning. Doesn't. Work. It didn't work for Deeds, who ran one of the most negative campaigns in recent memory in a desperate and pathetic attempt to paint McDonnell as a far-right sexist bigot. And it didn't work for Corzine, who actually ran ads claiming that Christie was pro-cancer. Yes, really.
Jersey blues for the Dems
While most Democrats had probably resigned themselves to the fact that Creigh Deeds was a lost cause in Virginia, Corzine's loss in New Jersey must have been tough to take, whatever the spin today. Even Obama himself was campaigning on Corzine's behalf as late as Sunday.
I must admit that even I didn't think Chris Christie could pull off a win in New Jersey. Polling in the run-up to election day showed the two essentially tied, and Corzine with the momentum. Considering New Jersey's history of fraud and corruption by the Democratic Party, I figured it'd be an unlikely mountain for Christie to overcome. But he did, beating Corzine 49%-45%. Despite the hype, in the end, Daggett (the Independent candidate) didn't siphon off enough anti-Corzine votes to deny Christie his victory.
I don't know if Chistie, or anyone, can salvage the train wreck that New Jersey has become, but here's hoping.
NY-23
The crazy, dramatic, twist-filled race for the vacant House seat in New York's 23rd Congressional district ended with a narrow, hard-fought victory for Democrat Bill Owens -- the one bright spot for Democrats last night. Doug Hoffman, the upstart Conservative Party candidate, took 45% of the vote to Owens' 49%.
However, the nominally Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava -- who dropped out of the race this weekend and endorsed Owens (yes, the Democrat) after collapsing in the polls, still received 5.5% of the vote, probably mostly from loyal, elderly Republican voters who don't pay much attention to the news. Needless to say, those votes could have put Hoffman over the top.
The media and Democrats have been crowing that NY-23 is the start of a disastrous "GOP civil war" and a harbinger of doom for the Republican party, which will tear itself apart over "purity tests" regarding the conservative credentials of GOP candidates. I find these hysterical predictions pretty absurd, considering the extremely unique and special circumstances surrounding this particular race, and not worth discussing here.
Eyebrow-raisers
In Virginia, McDonnell's 18-point landslide margin of victory was not a surprise. But there were a few:
- McDonnell won Virginia voters under the age of 30 by a 10-point margin. In fact, he won every age group.
- McDonnell won Fairfax County (51-49%). Obama won the county by 21 points last year. Even after the Washington Post ran about a hundred stories on the sinister implications of McDonnell's college thesis, and Deeds blanketed NoVa with negative ads and flyers for months in an attempt to convince suburban voters that McDonnell was a scary, sexist, homophobic religious nut. Actually, McDonnell swept all of NoVa, except Arlington and Alexandria City -- counties that all went heavily for Obama and made Virginia go blue in 2008.
- And on that note...McDonnell also won the female vote (54-46%). McDonnell even won among self-described "full-time working women." Maybe due to the fact that 65% of Virginia voters said McDonnell's college thesis did not influence their vote.
I think it's pretty indisputable that Deeds's all-thesis-all-the-time negative attack strategy was a complete and utter failure.
Not only did Chris Christie receive a higher percentage of the vote than the previous two (rare) Republican NJ governors, but he won in New Jersey counties (Middlesex and Gloucester) that had voted for Obama by 10+ point margins last year.
The closest race of the night (as far as I can tell): Ron Villanueva (R) defeated Bobby Mathieson (D) for the Virginia Beach City house seat by just 16 votes out of more than 15,000 cast (49.94% to 49.84%). A good reminder that every vote matters.