Every Virginia poll taken since mid-October showed McDonnell with a double-digit lead, and he and his Republican ticket mates swept to solid victories. Those who dismiss such results as irrelevant to national politics might want to have a chat with Florio.
New Jersey this year is more complicated. About 60 percent of voters disapprove of Corzine's performance in a state with some of the highest taxes and public employee pensions in the country. But Corzine has used his personal wealth to drag Republican Chris Christie's numbers down, and independent candidate Chris Daggett could take enough votes for Corzine to squeak through.
But a Corzine plurality win could scarcely be taken as an endorsement of Democratic policies in a state that Obama carried with 57 percent of the vote.
There will be some lessons in the results for Republicans, as well. One of the big surprises of this year has been the spontaneous outpouring of spirited opposition to the Democrats' big government programs and the disappearance of the enthusiasm that propelled Obama and Democrats to their big wins in 2008. The question is how Republicans can harness that enthusiasm.
McDonnell did that in Virginia with a classic campaign. Early on, he staked out clear and detailed positions on issues important to voters and refused to be distracted by Washington Post news stories designed to depict him as an intolerant troglodyte. He showed the sense of command voters want in an executive.
Christie, with less experience in electoral politics, did not present such a detailed platform, which left him vulnerable to vote-poaching by Daggett and to the cynical attacks of the Corzine campaign. He's vulnerable as well to demographics: As he noted in his last ad, New Jersey's high taxes have been driving conservative voters out of the state.
Yes, both of these governor races involve issues specific to particular states and candidates with particular strengths and weaknesses. But the odd-year elections of 2009, like those of 1993 and 2001, still provide clues to where the nation's voters are headed, and it's a different direction than they took in the presidential election last year.
Michael Barone
Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner (
www.washingtonexaminer.com), is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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