A few hours before all the results are in, who’s gonna stick their neck out on the big races?
I say McDonnell by a lot,
Hoffman by a little,
and Corzine by a hair.
Also Maine will give us our first instance of the voters upholding same-sex marriage at the ballot box.
Anyone disagree?
I predict the press will continue to treat these elections as a major statement on Obama - or the future of the GOP - when they are probably nothing of the kind. But for the record I’ll say McConnell in Virginia, Christine in NJ, and Hoffman upstate.
Oh yes, and you heard it here first - Bloomberg over Thompson. 
And just for easy reference:
Virginia governorship
Deeds (D)
McDonnell ®
NJ governorship
Corzine (D)
Daggett (I)
Christie ®
NY-23 congressional seat
Owens (D)
Hoffman (Cons)
Yea I really hope that most people don’t vote for their state’s leadership based on how they perceive the job performance of the President of the United States.
I understand the midterm being a referendum of sorts seeing as how we vote for US Congress, the tools the President has to meet his goals…But really who the chief executive of Virginia is has little to nothing to do with what Obama is doing. Is that really the most prevalent factor in how people vote?
I thought midterm election usually meant even-numbered years, when the House and a third of the Senate are up for re-election. This is an off year. And no, I don’t think most people are voting for or against Obama today. I do think we can expect the news stations to continue treating it that way, though, which is stupid and unenlightening: we’re dealing with local offices here, and it’s not unusual for a Democratic-leaning state federally to have a Republican governor, or vice versa. And not only that, but Virginia and New Jersey are usually tight races in the first place.
Nate Silver at 538.com has a great piece about this today, by the way.
Yea this is an off year election. My midtern reference was that those were the “referendum” elections, but that’s not what tonight is.
The press seems to be on top of this one. The Republicans are coming on the news shows just trying to hammer this message about Obama, but the press is saying: “Hey, we exit polled the shit out of this question, and people are saying the exact opposite.” It’s not stopping the Republicans from trying to get the message through, but the press isn’t having any of it. I haven’t watched Fox News yet, but I’m sure they have the same poll results, but they aren’t mentioning them.
MSNBC projects McDonnell. No Surprise, it looks to be the landslide everyone was expecting.
NJ polls about to close, that will be the interesting one.
McDonnell, Christie, and Hoffman will win.
Christie wins. Wow.
Also of note, NY 23rd is running closer than expected, although it is still early. Bloomberg is running very surprisingly neck and neck with Thompson with over half of precincts reporting.
Going to sleep…hoping that Maine doesn’t pull a California and backtrack on gay marriage.
http://www.bangordailynews.com/electionresults.html
Maine is super close.
Owens has all but won NY 23.
It really blows my mind that the national Tea Party people didn’t think the local republican was conservative enough, so they meddled by backing a super conservative from outside the district. As a result they gave the Democrat a seat the Republicans have held for a century.
Hey I can’t complain about that. I got one out of three like I wanted, just not the way I expected.
Weird times. Decision '09 may not be decided quite yet after all.
After the Franken-Coleman spectacle, I can’t wait to witness the contortions to be performed by Rs demanding a recount. Props to Hoffman though for appearing to have some class about it:
(from the first link)
“Bill Owens was sworn in 2 days later and proceeded to vote in favor of Pelosi’s health care bill the following day. While Mr. Hoffman feels that deliberately contesting the results of the election to prevent Owens’ deciding vote in the Health Care bill would “not have been very sportsmanlike,” and that he, personally, would not like to see a politician manipulate events in that manner, he also indicated that the good of the American people and the citizens of the 23rd district would have weighed in on that decision as well.”
Maybe he isn’t a True Repub after all.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone thought Hoffman had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. The man has the charisma of Joe Lieberman’s soup.