Here’s my quick take on the elections yesterday. Virginia is a red state again. The race for governor was a blow out. In New Jersey the Republican defeated the highly unpopular incumbent and in New York the Democrat won the special election for the House. What does it all mean?
Without Obama on the ticket it’s tough to get the Democrat base out to vote. Democrats will not be successful in battleground states if their party is perceived as the tax and spend party. The GOP is a joke. They picked Dede Scozzafava to run in the special election in New York and when she dropped out she endorsed the Democrat. If the GOP had picked Hoffman there’s a better chance he would have won. It says a lot about what the choices facing voters in the Northeast. They can either pick a Democrat or a Republican who is actually a Democrat.
New Jersey is purely a local election. Republican Chris Christie defeated incumbent John Corzine because New Jersey is a corrupt mess. I’ll stick with what I said on Monday. There’s not much to learn from an election like this, but the nation is looking more like 2004 than 2008,
I can’t believe it’s almost November. It’s been one year since Obama won the election and became the first Democrat to win 50% of the vote since LBJ. Many pundits at the time speculated that a shift in American politics had occurred. I argued that Obama ran as moderate and people were so fed up with Bush and the Republicans they bought it. Well, Obama has governed from the left and let the Congress rule.
The economy more than anything else is gnawing away at support for the President and of the Congress. There are two high profile off term elections. The most notable is the race for governor in Virginia.
Intrade odds is a prediction market on elections. It’s kind of crazy but it’s typically spot on when it come to predicting election outcomes.
Republican candidate Bob McDonnell will easily win the Virginia’s governor’s race (94.9% probability), and the Democratic candidate Jon Corzine will likely win in New Jersey (63% probability in recent trading, more than double the 30% odds on October 1) in a 3-way race including an independent candidate, although recent polling shows the two leading candidates in a statistical dead heat.
The fact that McDonnell isn’t facing much of a challenge in Virginia isn’t good news for Democrats. The Democrats have done very well the past two cycles in Virginia and it’s part of the reason they’ve done well nationally. New Jersey is a sad race. Governor Corzine is terribly unpopular and cozy with corruption; however, he’s a Democrat in a very blue state. I expect Corzine to win, and New Jersey to continue to be a source of jokes about corruption.
If McConnell wins in a landslide it could scare many Democrats over the next six months. The Democrats need the economy to bounce back before the mid-terms or it could be an election slaughter.
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