I’ll update this thread periodically tonight, but please post comments about any local election results in your corner of Iowa.
I have a feeling the incumbents will lose in Windsor Heights; Mr. desmoinesdem says unusually high turnout is often a sign of anti-incumbent sentiment.
The Virginia governor’s race has already been called for Republican Bob McDonnell.
Adam Bink is liveblogging the results from Maine on Proposition 1 and is very optimistic.
New Jersey is too close to call. Swing State Project posted 2008 NJ results by county and projected how well Governor Jon Corzine has to do in each county in order to pull through tonight. Exit polls suggest Republican Chris Christie won independents, but more women than men voted overall, which would be good for Corzine. Turnout in Democratic stronghold Hudson County (Newark) is quite a bit down from last year. Still not clear what percentage of voters cast early ballots. The New Jersey Democratic Party did a big absentee ballot push, but Republicans did not. That strategy has paid off for Iowa Democrats, but will it be enough for Corzine?
(updates moved after the jump)
UPDATE: Looks like Christie will win NJ. As I feared, support for Daggett (who had been polling between 10 and 15 percent) collapsed to around 5 percent, and his voters seem to have broken heavily for Christie.
No on 1 is leading the early returns in Maine and racked up big margins in some of the key base areas like the city of Portland.
Polk County results are here. There will be runoff elections for the at-large and Ward 1 seats on the Des Moines City Council. In the at-large race, Leisha Barcus won about 32.3 percent and will face Skip Moore, who won 30.3 percent. David Adelman finished a very close third with 28.1 percent.
In Ward 1, which Tom Vlassis has represented for 20 years, Vlassis was unable to win enough support to avoid a runoff. (He was a rubber-stamp board member of the Central Iowa Employment Training Consortium during the time money was misallocated at CIETC.) Vlassis won nearly 44 percent tonight, with Republican Drake Law School student Halley Greiss in second place with 39.5 percent. Will the 12.4 percent who backed Sharon Mueller vote in the runoff? If so, their leanings could decide the winner.
In the Clive City Council at-large seat race, incumbent Paul Leighton appears to have won by just 16 votes, but I don’t know whether a runoff will be required there. (He only got 29 percent of the overall vote.)
Jerry Sullivan won re-election as Windsor Heights mayor with 57.5 percent of the vote. The City Council race was ridiculously close. The first-place candidate had 17.7 percent of the vote, and the sixth-place candidate had 14.6 percent! Incumbent Diana Willits and newcomer Betty Glover finished first and second, but two other incumbents, Flo Hunter and Carole Tillotson, are tied with 458 votes each (16.2 percent) according to preliminary returns. There are only three seats available. Do they break ties with a coin flip? When Tillotson was first elected to the council eight years ago, she finished just two votes ahead of the fourth-place candidate. CORRECTION: A neighbor tells me that according to Windsor Heights statute, Willits is in, and the next four candidates (Glover, Hunter, Tillotson and David Jenison) will have a runoff for the remaining two seats. I’ve never heard of a procedure like that.
SECOND UPDATE: Maine numbers looking very tight, and some rural areas have not reported yet. Adam Bink has a new results thread up here. That would be a bigger disappointment than Corzine losing.
In Kalamazoo, Michigan, voters approved a non-discrimination ordinance.
Remarkably, Democrat Bill Owens is leading New York’s 23rd Congressional district with two-thirds of the vote in. If the most Republican counties haven’t reported yet, though, right-winger Doug Hoffman could still pull ahead.
THIRD UPDATE: Corzine was just too unpopular to win. Very few governors are re-elected with numbers like these.
FOURTH UPDATE: Todd Dorman discusses the winners and losers in Cedar Rapids.
FIFTH UPDATE: John Deeth sums up the Iowa City elections.
It looks as if Prop 1 will pass in Maine, overturning marriage equality. Very disappointing. However, a lot of absentee ballots haven’t been counted, and a statewide recount is possible.
I agree with Taniel of the Campaign Diaries blog:
Obama’s refusal to help the ‘no’ even in minimal way biggest insult to gay community yet. And he can’t say he’s just going slow on this one.
Meanwhile, all major networks have called NY-23 for Democrat Bill Owens. I am shocked. I thought he would lose by 15 points. Chris Bowers is on target here:
Republican civil war to get bloodier: While I would much rather have had Corzine, and while I am still nervous about Maine, this win by Owens will cause even more damage in the ongoing Republican civil war. Owens won because he was endorsed by Scozzafava, who was herself torpedoed by most of the Republican establishment. Lots of finger pointing, and no clear result. This is going to get even bloodier.
Republicans had held New York’s 23rd district since 1871. The Club for Growth invested $1 million in Hoffman’s campaign and drove mainstream Republican Scozzafava from the race. Dumb move. Wingnuts still don’t understand the concept of “good fit for the district.”
FINAL UPDATE: No on 1 Maine conceded defeat on Wednesday morning. It seems the final margin will be approximately 53-47. Very disappointing for a well-run effort that seemed to have learned the right lessons from the Prop 8 campaign in California. Maine citizens voted down other conservative-backed ballot initiatives yesterday and voted to allow expand access to medical marijuana, but it was just too soon for a majority to accept gay marriage. I haven’t seen an age breakdown of the electorate, but I would be the youth vote share was down compared to 2008. It was way down in Virginia.
OK, REALLY THE LAST WORD: I forgot to mention that in California’s 10th Congressional district, Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi easily defeated his Republican opponent. Garamendi will be far more progressive than Ellen Tauscher was. She was a leader of the corporate-friendly “New Democrats” House caucus and left Congress earlier this year to take a position in the State Department.