A good electoral indicator

Of the politically significant races being watched yesterday, the more moderate candidates came out ahead in every race -- a good predictor of where we are headed in the coming 2014 big races to take back the House and hold on to the Senate.

Perhaps the most moderate Republican on the national scene, Chris Christie, won big in his re-election as governor of New Jersey.    Now that's putting him in the moderate-win column despite his defeat of the democratic challenger, so this one doesn't quite fit.   But in fact Christie got a good bit of support, both in donations and in votes, from Democrats.   He's seen as a strong moderate, capable of bipartisan cooperation to get things done.   His opponent just didn't have the stature or the drawing appeal.   So I think this vote was for a strong moderate over a weak liberal.   Probably no New Jersey Democrat could have defeated Christie in this race.

The big change-over win was in Virginia.   The Democrat Terry McAuliffe edged out a close race 48% to 45.5% over firebrand conservative Ken Cuccinelli for the governorship.   But the Democrats also won the Lt. Governor's race by an even larger margin and are in a virtual tie and headed for a recount in the race for Attorney General, the one the Republicans thought would be an easy win for them.   So despite still controlling both legislative bodies, Virginia now has Democrats in charge of the executive branch, instead of total control of government by Republicans.

And of course, another expected win -- but also a big change -- the most progressive Democrat in the New York mayor's primary won the general election by a landslide, 73.3% to 24.3%.  He will be the first Democratic mayor of NYC in many years.  The Democratic candidate also won the Boston mayor's race -- and the Atlanta mayor won re-election, but that one was not even close and was predictable.

The other bellweather race was in Alabama's first congressional district Republican primary.  The more establishment Republican goes into a runoff with a 5% lead over the Tea Party backed candidate has won the race by 5%.   I was mistaken before.   This was the runoff race for the primary that was held a couple of months ago.

So, both in Virginia and Alabama, the Tea Party candidates have lost out to more moderate Republican opponents.

So -- all of this should be encouraging to those who want less of the ultra-conservative crowd.   And that is good news.  The bad news is that the Democrats might have an easier time winning in the 2012 general election against Tea Party candidates than against the more moderate Republicans.

Ralph