Virginia is going across the board to the Republicans. There's no surprise there but all three Republicans: Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General, are winning by around 20 points. Almost 80% of the precincts have been counted. So, the Republicans aren't merely winning, but winning big. President Obama won Virginia by 6 points so it may be as much as a 26 point swing. That is a stunning reversal. The exit polls said that Obama helped as much as hurt, but this is still a massive turn around. McDonnell was as good a candidate as Deeds was a bad candidate and so there was plenty of local influences there.
Meanwhile, with about 20% of the precincts counted, Chris Christie is leading by 10 points. It's unclear which precincts have been counted so it's not clear if this is a trend or if it's merely because the Republican leaning districts have been counted first. So far though, Republicans are having a very good night.
UPDATE:
Chris Christie has won by about five points. Meanwhile, Doug Hoffman is down four points with about half the precincts counted. Bill Owens will win in New York 23 and Michael Bloomberg will have a third term as New York City Mayor.
So, if Hoffman loses, the Demcrats can take some solace. The one clear and huge loser in all this are the pollsters. They didn't get anything right. Christie won fairly comfortably and the pollsters had it razor thin. McDonnell won by twenty while the polls were at twelve. Meanwhile, all the pollsters had Hoffman winning while he's losing. The pollsters have had better nights.
Also, both Christie and McDonnell are very impressive. If they have successful governorship watch for their political star to rise going forward.
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I think its fair to say that if you want to think of Virginia as a referendum on Obama you should consider how much Obama and Deeds are alike. Considering how very little Deeds appealed to Obama voters, I'd say not much.
Well, Republicans have a lot to hang their hats on at the statewide level, winning the Governor's race in both VA and NJ. But the place they hurt the Democrats most is in Maine, where a gay marriage repeal surprisingly passed.
As for the Democrats, they can take comfort in the fact that while the right can defeat establishment Republicans in primaries, they haven't figured out how to turn that into general election success. In addition, a special election for California's 10th Congressional district saw the election of John Garamendi, who is considerably more liberal than the DLC'er he replaced, Ellen Tauscher.
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