Off Year Elections at a Glance!

Too all but the political junkies you may have been surprised to see that yesterday was election day. But wait it is 2009; it’s just a year after the presidential election and its not time for midterms. Ahhhhh.......it’s just what a true junkie needs to feed that lonely time without challenging debates, candidate speeches, poll after poll and the media firestorm of political coverage. For just one night we had it all back, those moments you cling to your TV set and favorite news website on your laptop, following the horse race coverage like you have all but you life savings hinging on it. But what happens the day after might even be just as much fun. You have to love the political spin!

As was the case this morning; we woke up to headlines on CNN like "GOP Rules Election Night" and The Washington Post's "White House tries to Shrug off Democratic Election Loses." That was the start of Republicans claiming a "Republican renaissance" said Republican party chairman Michael Steele and the White House attributing GOP wins in Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races as a referenda on local issues that reflect little on the President's policies.

So what does all this mean? Are people acting out against President Obama and the Democratic party? First, I think we should keep in mind that these are two states out of fifty. Either way you swing it, it doesn't seem like a wide scale victory for either side. It's is definitely not time for either side to get over confident. Even the newly elected Virginia Governor, Bob McDonnell, played down the talk of GOP stardom. He told FOX News that he plans to let people talk all they want, he is going to focus on Virginia. What these elections did show us is that the President can't just show up and expect the vote to be delivered to his party. Both parties are going to have to pay attention to Independent voters. CNN exit polls show that 30percent of Virginia voters identify themselves as Independents and of those 65 percent voted for Republican Bob McDonnell. The story was the same in New Jersey. Twenty eight percent of the voters are independent and 60 percent of those voted for Republican winner Chris Christie. Another interesting factor found in the exit polls that may have hurt Democrats, was that many of those who voted for President Obama didn't show up to vote. More old people voted, than young people.

Another interesting issue seems to be the congressional race in New York's 23rd district. The Conservative grass-roots activists basically pushed out the Republican nominee, Dede Scozzafava, because she was too moderate. They instead got behind a conservative third-party candidate, Doug Hoffman, that they believed was more in line with their ideology. The Republican establishment had backed Scozzafava who is a fiscal moderate and supports abortion and gay rights. In the end Scozzafava dropped out of the race and Hoffman lost by four percentage points to Democrat Bill Owens.

The bigger question remains; will ideological differences like we saw in this case divide the Republican party? In past elections, divides like this have been to blame for unsuccessful campaigns. It will be interesting to see if moderate conservatives still feel like they have a place in the Republican party.