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I agree with your point - to a certain extent. I don't think any republican candidate would have won the governorship tonight whether they were GOPe or a Trump relative. In any election in which the president is not on the ballot, members of the other party tend to swarm at the polls to register their displeasure.

Much has been made about Obama losing 1,000 seats for the dems when he was in office. He got the blame whether it was fair or not. I'm sure some of those races were poorly run by the dem or they made some stupid comment, but fair or not, Obama got the blame.

The same will happen with Trump. It goes with the territory. The party out of power is often more energized to go to polls. All of this is proven by doing nothing more than looking at election results in off years. It is rare the party in the White House picks up seats in off year elections. It is just the way it is. W Bush did it, but that was after 9/11. That is just the way the world looks at it.

Someone wrote that the downticket races where there is not much attention paid to them and not much money is spent on the race tend to show up as the ones registering their displeasure.

But for me (for what it is worth), I do wonder how the state party prepared for house races. The democrats went all out to win the state house. They put up candidates in races where they had not challenged in years and I think the republicans used the prevent defense. I work with folks who couldn't wait to vote today and I know they did not vote republican. So, here in Northern Virginia, with increasing numbers of democrats, I don't know if anything could have stopped them regardless.

I don't hold Trump responsible for that, but the media will.

P.S. The pubs may still keep the house by 1 seat or so.