The election results
Michael Barone
There's a ritual, a kind of kabuki dance, to interpreting the results of the two gubernatorial elections, in Virginia and New Jersey, that are held the year after the presidential election. If one party wins both elections, its spin doctors claim that they are a verdict on the national administration—up if the national party's candidates win, down if (as in such elections going back now to 1989) the national party's candidates lose. The spin doctors of the other party quote Tip O'Neill's adage that "all politics is local" and say that the results were due to state and local issues and have no relevance to national politics.
There's some truth on both sides. State elections are, after all, about state issues—why else would we have, as we do now, Republican governors in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont (John Kerry's three best states) and a Democratic governor in Wyoming (George W. Bush's No. 1 state in 2000 and No. 2 in 2004)? And yet the trends in national politics are sometimes echoed in the results in elections for governor. Issues that work for one party in state elections sometimes work for them in federal elections as well. I don't hold with the traditional view that governors have great power to deliver votes for their party's nominees in presidential elections. But state elections do have some implications for national politics.
Democrats, after their victories in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, are arguing that these results, together with the national polls, show a repudiation of the Bush administration. Republicans are arguing that these were just local contests, with no national implications. They're both right and both wrong.
What strikes me most about the two state elections is how similar the results were to those in 2001 in the same contests. Virginia 2001: Warner (D) 52 to 47 percent. Virginia 2005: Kaine (D) 52 to 46 percent. New Jersey 2001: McGreevey (D) 56 to 42 percent. New Jersey 2005: Corzine (D) 53 to 44 percent. Republicans appear to have won, narrowly, the other two statewide offices up in Virginia this time; they won one and lost one four years ago. Republicans went into the 2005 election with 60 of the 100 seats in the House of Delegates; they emerged with 59 votes.
One thing election results can tell us a lot more about than a poll is turnout. Turnout in Virginia, with 99.67 percent of precincts reporting, was up 4 percent as against 2001 in a state where turnout increased in 2004 as compared with 2000 by 17 percent and in which population, according to census estimates, increased 5 percent in 2000-04. Turnout in New Jersey, with 97 percent of precincts reporting, was 2 percent below total 2001 turnout. Most likely the final figures will show a slight turnout increase. This in a state where presidential race turnout increased 13 percent in 2000-04 and population increased 3 percent. Caution: Sometimes turnout figures rise as more absentees are counted, etc. |
