Voters Now a Rampaging Herd

Polling guru gives a post-mortem on last night's elections

(NEWSER) - The numbers are in, now it's time to make sense of them. Nate Silver breaks down last night's election results:

• Don’t blame Obama; Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine were probably just weak candidates. In New Jersey, 57% of voters approved of Obama, but 27% of those supporters voted Republican anyway. In Virginia 20% of those who approved of Obama voted GOP.
• Democrats had turnout problems in Virginia; the voters who came out last night supported McCain 51-43 in 2008, a mirror image of that year's margin.

Winning coalition doesn't reemerge in gubernatorial races

(NEWSER) - Last night’s gubernatorial defeats proved to Democrats that whatever magic they harnessed last November has left the building. Off-year elections aren’t usually great predictors, but with the Democrats’ winning 2008 coalition essentially absent, the warning signs are clear, writes Dan Balz in the Washington Post. Most notably, Democrats lost the independents, who broke decisively for Republicans last night after being solidly Democratic last year. More»

Majorities say president has no influence on vote

(NEWSER) - President Obama seems to have been a minimal factor in gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, at least according to early exit polls. In Virginia, where Republican Bob McDonnell won, 55% said Obama wasn’t behind their vote; that figure was 60% in New Jersey, where the race was too close to call an hour after polls closed, CBS News reports. More»

GOP's chances looking good in Gov races as fallout builds

(NEWSER) - America's dissatisfaction with Democratic rule just 9 months into the Obama presidency will be crystal clear after next week's elections, writes Karl Rove . Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell looks set to defeat Democrat Creigh Deeds in Virginia's gubernatorial race on the back of anti-Washington, anti-Obama sentiment, Rove notes in the Wall Street Journal. The victory will be a warning to many Democrats that backing Obama's policies isn't a winning strategy, he adds. More»

Reports of a great liberal realignment are greatly exaggerated

(NEWSER) - The outcome of Tuesday's elections dispel the myth of a great political re-alignment supposedly heralded by the election of Barack Obama last year, writes Charles Krauthammer . Believers swore young and minority voters would establish a new liberal majority and bury the GOP. But Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey show that Obama’s victory had more to do with his personal appeal, and the dissatisfaction with George Bush, than any great political shift. More»