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Governor-elect Chris Christie made a surpise appearance at the New Jersey Family Policy annual dinner. Gov Christie thanked the audience for all of the work done on behalf of New Jersey families. Christie told the New Jersey Family Policy group about his own family and his kids and spoke about their shared values. Governor-elect Chris Christie said he prepared his family for the possibility of a loss that was not to be. He huddled with his family on election night before going on stage to accept the election results. His family all shared their love and celebration. Governor-elect Christie graciously...

OK, here's what should be the nail in the coffin for conservative claims that ACORN is poised to steal the New Jersey governor's race through rampant voter fraud. Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, tells TPMmuckraker that the much-maligned group has conducted absolutely no political or voter registration activity in the state during the 2009 cycle. And Kettenring added that ACORN had done very little such work during the 2008 cycle. In a column published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund sounded the alarm about the threat from ACORN -- but a close look reveals that even here he...

A New Grassroots Political Organization Makes Its Mark by Deal W. Hudson    11/06/09 The election results of November 2 were not merely the spontaneous reaction of Republicans to the bad economy and liberal excesses of the Obama administration. The four pro-life, conservative GOP candidates in Virginia and New Jersey were elected in a groundswell of religious and social conservatives, many of them independent voters who had voted for Obama only a year ago. A new grassroots organization played a major role in getting these voters to the polls -- the Faith & Freedom Coalition was founded by Ralph...

Full County Results for New Jersey with results for most towns.

Liberals and conservatives each have their own intellectual food chains. They have their own think tanks to provide arguments, politicians and pundits to amplify them, and news media outlets to deliver streams of prejudice-affirming stories. Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don’t have any of this... --snip-- The most telling races this year were the suburban rebellions across the country. For example, in Westchester and Nassau counties in New York, Republican candidates came from nowhere to defeat entrenched Democratic county officials. In blue Pennsylvania, the G.O.P. won six out of seven statewide offices... --snip-- The percentage of...

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008...

Contrary to some reports, the Republican sweep of Tuesday's governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia is not a direct rebuke of President Obama, according to Leo Hindery, managing partner of InterMedia Partners. Indeed, a Democrat won New York's 23rd Congresional District for the first time since 1872. (Yes, 1872.) But even Hindery, a former advisor to President Obama and John Edwards' senior economic policy advisor, can't deny the Democrats have stumbled. "The lesson is simple: It's the economy, stupid," Hindery says. "Healthcare reform is an important issue...but the priority was misguided. I'm a strong advocate of universal healthcare but...

As Santayana said, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it." Congressional Democrats take note! Are the elections of 2009 precursors of the same kind of massive partisan upheaval in Congress that we experienced in 1994? The historical data says yes, they are. In Virginia, the outcomes in 1993 and 2009 were almost identical. In 1993, after the Democratic incumbent, Doug Wilder, could not seek re-election, the governor's race pitted Republican George Allen against Democrat Mary Sue Terry. Allen won handily, 58 to 41 — virtually the same margin by which McDonnell defeated Deeds this week. And...

In Ohio, citizens marched to the polls on Tuesday and voted to allow gambling casinos in the state. This was obviously a message to President Obama that independent voters are not happy with the way the health care bill is going. Really, I don’t see how else you can interpret it. Ohioans were looking forward to the lower insurance costs that would come with a robust public option, and if the president can’t deliver, they’re planning to pay their future medical bills with their winnings at the roulette wheel. Also, people here in Cincinnati rejected a proposal that would have...

Democrats have some thinking to do after Tuesday's elections, but Republicans don't have time to think. They're too busy trying to survive the party's internal purge and avoid being shipped off to political Siberia. Will loyal members inform on others for harboring suspiciously moderate views? Will anyone judged guilty have to wear a sign saying "Republican In Name Only" as penance? Will there be re-education camps? Will deviationists face the Enhanced Interrogation Technique of being forced to listen to the wit and wisdom of Glenn Beck, at ear-splitting volume, for days on end? Or worse: When Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going...

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of ObamaCare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008. In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future. One...

As the final votes were being counted, it was possible to draw some lessons from Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia and the close, three-way governor's race in New Jersey, never mind that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has taken to saying that the elections don't mean much. The odd-year elections -- held in the first year of a presidency -- have been meaningful over the last two decades. In 1993, New Jersey voters rejected tax-raising Democratic Gov. James Florio, despite the best efforts of Bill Clinton's consultant James Carville -- a harbinger of the losses congressional Democrats suffered...

President Barack Obama has brushed aside a sharp rebuke at the polls on the first anniversary of his historic election, saying his administration had saved the nation from economic ruin. Just hours after rival Republicans gleefully ousted Democratic candidates in two key gubernatorial races, the White House dismissed suggestions that the results were a referendum on Obama and his policies. Republicans trumpeted Tuesday's victories in New Jersey and Virginia as a conservative comeback one year to the day after Obama vowed before a tumultuous crowd in Chicago that change had come to America. But Obama reminded a school audience in...

My Wednesday Examiner column, written as the 2009 election returns were coming in, stands up pretty well. But let me add some observations written as the course of the elections became clearer. First, in the governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidate ran far behind Barack Obama’s percentages in 2008 and the Republican candidates ran ahead of George W. Bush’s percentages in 2004. The numbers are pretty daunting. In Virginia Creigh Deeds won 41% of the votes, way behind Barack Obama’s 53% in 2008. And in New Jersey Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine won 45% of the votes,...

ELECTION 2009: CHANGE I CAN BELIEVE IN! -- MSNBC, Aug. 31, 2009, Keith Olbermann on Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia: "In [McDonnell's master's thesis], he described women having jobs as detrimental to the family, called legalized use of contraception illogical, pushed to make divorce more difficult, and insisted government should favor married couples over, quote, 'cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.' Wow. When did he write this? 1875? No, 1989. Wow, 1989. "Goodbye, Mr. McDonnell." -- MSNBC, Sept. 22, 2009, Rachel Maddow also on McDonnell: "And here's where the conservative movement and the Republican establishment smash into each...

Unsurprisingly, Michael Barone has an interesting and incisive roundup of numbers from last night that go deeper than the top-line results. Some nuggets: * Bergen County, New Jersey, a 56%-42% Corzine constituency in 2005, came within a point or two of voting for Christie. * Westchester County, New York, voted 58%-42% for a Republican county executive after voting almost exactly the opposite way, in a race involving the same two candidates, four years before. * The Virginia Board of Elections has results by CD showing that three Dems who captured seats in 2008 by very narrow margins (the 2nd, 5th,...

Krauthammer on Foxnews Special Report responds to what the House Democrats reaction to the election results are...

Yesterday's election showed many cracks developing in the alliance that put the Democrats into power just one year ago. Independent voters were the most obvious but there were others, while still voting democratic young and urban voters were not motivated to come out for Obama's candidates, especially in New Jersey the state where the POTUS invested the most time and political capital. The other group shifting away from the Obama coalition is suburbia. Already facing growing property taxes, they see a federal government with no inclination to curb spending and the higher taxes the deficits will bring. According to Karl...

The GOP victories reveal fissures in the coalition that elected Barack Obama. If you were watching television on Tuesday night as the election returns came in showing Republicans capturing the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, you probably missed seeing the biggest losers of the evening. You may have caught the concession speech of Creigh Deeds, who ran 12% behind Barack Obama's winning percentage of the vote in Virginia, and that of Jon Corzine who, after spending over $100 million of his own money on three... --snip-- Instead, support evaporated as Democrats from places as dissimilar as Arkansas and California...

Did voters in the elections last night say, "Yes," to "The Party of No?" Were the convincing victories in last night's elections a victory for the Republican Party? And, were they a defeat for President Obama?