Hi all,

Well, some bad news for statewide races today -- Virginia voters put their governor, lt. governor, and attorney general into the Republican column. In Virginia Beach, Bobby Mathieson's race is still too close to call, but it looks like enough votes are in to say that Joe Bouchard lost his seat tonight, too.

The Pilot has this site where you can click on the tabs and drop-down list for different candidates:
https://www.voterinfo...

On the bright side, with almost all votes in, Delegate Phil Hamilton has lost his race to Robin Abbott in Newport News. Hamilton was the one candidate who truly deserved to lose his race over abusing his office for financial gain, and Abbott was a great candidate, the type of person we need in public office.


Although Creigh Deeds has been criticized for all sorts of things as people tried to guess why he was behind in the polls, MSNBC did an analysis tonight to show that the race was largely lost because younger and minority Democrats didn't turn out for him today like they had for Obama. This is something that we could see coming, and will have to deal with going forward.

Much has been made of Virginia going against the party of the president, but MSNBC polls show that Obama had little effect on today's election.

Otherwise, I have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen over the next few years, and Virginians may have to learn a lesson about the importance of state elections as they live with the results of today's race. That may motivate people to the polls next time, but for now the party has to step back and take a look at how it can improve voter turnout and other factors going forward.