Today is election day, but since it's an off-off-year there are just three races that have gained national attention: the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, and the special election for an open congressional seat in New York's 23rd district.
Virginia Governor: I'm fairly confident in predicting that Republican Bob McDonnell will beat Democrat Creigh Deeds by a fairly comfortable margin. Deeds has run a pretty weak campaign and McDonnell has been pretty effective in tacking to the center to gain some votes in moderate northern Virginia that went to Obama last year. Not much mystery here.
New Jersey Governor: This is the race that is the hardest to predict. For most of the year Republican Chris Christie had a sizable lead over Democratic incumbent John Corzine, but Corzine is closing strong as some of the shine has come off Christie and now the race is literally tied in the Pollster.com average. What Christie has going for him are greater Republican enthusiasm and being a change agent in a bad economic year. Corzine has the structural advantages of incumbency and New Jersey's finely tuned Democratic get-out-the-vote machinery. I'll go down as predicting Corzine will eek out a win, but I wont be at all surprised if it comes out the other way. Additionally, there will be lots of punditizing about what these races mean for Obama and the Democrats, and most of it will be stupid, but this is the one race where it would be fair to extrapolate broader notions of the national mood. If the Democrats lose, they need to concentrate on ways to gin up enthusiasm before next year.
New York 23rd District: This is a crazy race. It was a three-way race that the Democrat Bill Owens was winning, but since Republican Dede Scozzafava dropped out, it's a two-way race between Owens and Conservative Party candidate and Teabagger Doug Hoffman. This is a heavily Republican district that elected a Republican even during the bloodbaths of 2006 and 2008, so it's no surprise that Hoffman is now in the lead since the conservative vote is no longer split. I think this race will say more about internal Republican dynamics than the direction of the country though. This race could be a surprise since there have been so many twists and turns, but I will go the safe route and predict a Hoffman victory.
EDIT: There is another congressional election going on today that I overlooked, and the Democrat is tethering himself to Obama and is likely to win. It hasn't gotten as much attention, probably because it doesn't fit the media's new narrative that the President is the most hated man in America.
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