An Unhappy Electorate

Our View: Neither Party Should Take Much Comfort In The Results Of Tuesday's Elections, But Both Should Realize The Anxiety, Dissatisfaction Of Voters

Tuesday's election results were certainly no good sign for President Barack Obama and the Democrats. But they weren't exactly a boon for Republicans either.

President Obama campaigned hard for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who lost decisively to Republican Chris Christie. The president wasn't embraced as thoroughly by Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds, but Mr. Obama did stump for his party's nominee in that state and attempted to help turn out the same voters who brought him victory there last year. It didn't work. Mr. Deeds was trounced by Republican Robert F. McDonnell.

Some analysts are trying to spin those defeats into evidence of a national rejection of Mr. Obama's agenda on health care, the economy, foreign policy, climate change and anything else they can think of. But that's a stretch. Exit polling indicated that about 4 in 10 votes in those states were intended as a reflection on Mr. Obama, and they were about evenly split between support and opposition. Local factors were more important.

In Virginia, Mr. Deeds failed to connect with voters and found himself running against a Republican who presented himself as a pragmatic problem solver, not an arch-conservative. Mr. Deeds' focus on a thesis Mr. McDonnell had written years before in which he expressed strongly conservative social views didn't work against a candidate who was talking about jobs, taxes and roads, not abortion or gay marriage. In New Jersey, Mr. Corzine was profoundly unpopular, in part because the economy had forced him to enact painful budget cuts and to reneg on a campaign promise to lower property taxes - but also in part because he was the incumbent in a state rocked by corruption scandals. He was actually further behind in the polls before Mr. Obama started trying to help him.