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      Did Ciattarelli Lawn Signs Predict his New Jersey Election Performance?

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      I told people on Monday that I thought Jack Ciattarelli would do better in the race for governor of New Jersey than the polls were indicating. My unscientific rationale was that Mr. Ciattarelli, the Republican challenger, had many more lawn signs than Gov. Phil Murphy where I live, northeastern Bergen County. I would estimate that Mr. Ciattarelli had at least 10 times as many signs.Mr. Ciattarelli did lose, but by only about 1 percentage point, defying a Rutgers-Eagleton poll showing him 8 percentage points down in late October. That didn’t make my lawn sign theory correct, of course. But the result was surprising. So I decided to look into the matter more closely.One theory might be that lawn signs influence election outcomes by increasing candidates’ name recognition. There might have been some of that going on. A 2016 study in the journal Electoral Studies by Donald Green, a political scientist at Columbia University, pooled the results of four experiments that involved placing lawn signs in randomly selected voting precincts and found that the signs had a small but not negligible effect — “probably greater than zero,” as he put it, “but unlikely to be large enough to alter the outcome of a contest that would otherwise be decided by more than a few percentage points.”Another theory might be that lawn signs are a sensitive indicator of voters’ preferences: If you care enough to have a sign in your yard, you probably care enough to vote for the candidate and maybe get others to do so. (Handmade signs presumably convey even more conviction.) In the 2016 presidential race, Michael Koenig of ABC News saw signs that Donald Trump would win — literally, about 20 lawn signs for every Hillary Clinton sign he encountered while bicycling through the countryside of swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.Professor Green told me by email that there is “a long history of trying to use the preponderance of lawn signs as a quasi poll to predict outcomes.” One study he sent me, from a 1979 issue of the journal Political Methodology, analyzed seven political races in a small, unnamed California city in 1978. It found that “candidates with the greatest number of signs received the greatest number of votes in six of the seven races.”In the U.S. presidential election of 2012, another study, by an undergraduate researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, found a high correlation in Eau Claire between the numbers of lawn signs for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and the candidates’ vote totals by ward.Keith Srakocic/Associated PressI’d call that research inconclusive. What’s conclusive is the sea change in the vote in northeastern Bergen County between the presidential election of 2020 and this year’s election for state and local offices. Using data from the Bergen County Board of Elections, I totaled up the votes from seven of the county’s 56 boroughs: Alpine, Closter, Cresskill, Demarest, Northvale, Norwood and Tenafly. These boroughs range from prosperous to outright rich. (The median listing price of houses for sale in Alpine is $5.7 million, according to Realtor.com.)In 2020, Joe Biden walloped Donald Trump in these boroughs, capturing 61.9 percent of the vote to Mr. Trump’s 36.6 percent. This year, according to early results that don’t include write-ins and provisional ballots, Mr. Murphy got 49.6 percent of the vote to Mr. Ciattarelli’s 50.3 percent.To me that says two things: Mr. Trump is highly disliked in the area, and Mr. Ciattarelli didn’t suffer by association with him. Mr. Ciattarelli’s signature issue was cutting taxes and reallocating state school aid, which now largely goes to troubled urban schools, to what he described as “struggling suburban, shore area and rural schools.”I’d like to say that my lawn sign detector was picking up on that big swing in voter preference. On Wednesday, though, I came upon another possible explanation for the profusion of Ciattarelli signs. I spoke with Richard Kurtz, a wealthy real estate investor who owns property in Alpine. He’s the chief executive of the Kamson Corporation of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., which owns and operates apartment complexes in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. He told me that he bought more than 100,000 Ciattarelli signs and had them put up all over the state, including on his own apartment properties.“I met Jack four or five months ago and I said, ‘This is a solid citizen,’” Mr. Kurtz told me. “His keen interest in the state. Everything he wants to do is positive, most of all lower taxes and do the right thing.”Campaign signs on property in Alpine, N.J., owned by Richard Kurtz, a real estate investor.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesAs for the signs, he added: “For some reason I always remember in my experience of voting, lawn signs are so special. If I had more time and energy, I would have liked to do even more.”Mr. Kurtz said that a man who works for him part-time put up dozens of signs on a heavily traveled stretch of Closter Dock Road in Alpine where Mr. Kurtz owns a sprawling property once owned by descendants of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. It was that stretch of signage that first caught my attention. “They probably overdid it here in Alpine,” Mr. Kurtz said with a laugh.When I told Professor Green about the Kurtz blitz, he thought of comparing vote totals in precincts where Mr. Kurtz put up signs on his properties with precincts where he didn’t to see if the signs made a difference. “That would be a lot of fun,” he said, imagining getting a nice research paper out of it. But since Mr. Kurtz spread the signs all over the state, that experiment won’t be possible.What originally looked to me like an indication of a groundswell of support for Mr. Ciattarelli doesn’t look so grass-roots anymore. On the other hand, Mr. Kurtz wasn’t responsible for all of those Ciattarelli signs I spotted. I’d say my lawn sign theory may still have something to recommend it.Peter Coy (@petercoy) writes a regular newsletter about economics for Opinion. You can sign up for his newsletter here.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republicans Are Going to Use Dog Whistles. Democrats Can’t Just Ignore Them.

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      The Virginia election results should shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics. No candidate would think of entering an election without a winning message on the economy or health care. Yet by failing to counter his opponent’s racial dog whistles, Terry McAuliffe did the equivalent, finding himself defenseless against a strategy Republicans have used to win elections for decades.Crucially, the Republican nominee, Glenn Youngkin, was able to use racially coded attacks to motivate sky-high white turnout without paying a penalty among minority voters. This appears to solve the problem bedeviling Republicans in the Trump era: how to generate high turnout for a candidate who keeps Donald Trump at arm’s length, as Mr. Youngkin did.Before Tuesday night, conventional wisdom held that racially coded attacks could well spur higher white turnout but that those gains would be offset by losses among minority voters. Mr. Youngkin proved this assumption false. He significantly outperformed other Republicans among white voters, especially women: In 2020, Joe Biden beat Mr. Trump among white women in Virginia by 50 percent to 49 percent, but according to exit polls, Mr. Youngkin beat Mr. McAuliffe among them by 57 percent to 43 percent. At the same time, Mr. Youngkin suffered no major drop-off among minority voters — if anything, he appeared to slightly outperform expectations.This should terrify Democrats. With our democracy on the line, we have to forge an effective counterattack on race while rethinking the false choice between mobilizing base voters or persuading swing voters.It will not work to ignore race and talk about popular issues instead. Mr. McAuliffe’s closing message was a generic appeal on infrastructure and other issues that poll well. He was following the strategy known as popularism, which has gained in influence since the 2020 election, when Democrats’ disappointing down-ballot performance was attributed to rhetoric like “defund the police.”In the heat of a campaign, popularism fails because Republicans will not let Democrats ignore race. Mr. Youngkin dragged race into the election, making his vow to “ban critical race theory” a centerpiece of his stump speech and repeating it over the closing weekend — even though in Virginia the prominence of C.R.T., which teaches that racism is woven into the structures of American society, was vastly exaggerated.Some Democrats may resist accepting the centrality of race, pointing to the bearish national political environment and cyclical patterns. This would be a mistake for two reasons. First, C.R.T. helped create the rough national environment, with Fox News hammering it relentlessly; and cyclical explanations, like thermostatic public opinion (a longstanding tendency for voters to drift toward the views of the party out of power on some issues), do not explain Democrats’ loss of support in the suburbs or the strong turnout. Voters in New Jersey, where a stronger-than-expected Republican performance caught Democrats off guard, have been inundated with C.R.T. hype by Fox News, too.Second, the past half-century of American political history shows that racially coded attacks are how Republicans have been winning elections for decades, from Richard Nixon’s “law and order” campaign to Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” and George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton ad. Many of these campaigns were masterminded by the strategist Lee Atwater, who in 1981 offered a blunt explanation: Being overtly racist backfires, he noted, “so you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.” C.R.T. is straight out of the Atwater playbook.In recent years, it has become commonplace in Democratic circles to think that our diversifying population has relegated such attacks to the past. The theory goes that Democrats can counteract racist appeals by encouraging high turnout among people of color. This interpretation took a ding in 2016 and a bigger hit in 2020, when Mr. Trump shocked many people by making major inroads with Latinos. Latinos recently became the largest population of color, and Democrats cannot win on the national level without winning them by large margins. Yet from 2016 to 2020, Democrats saw a seven-point drop in support among Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.How did the most racist president of our lifetime outperform a more generic Republican like Mitt Romney with Latinos? Research by Equis Labs suggests that Latinos found Mr. Trump’s populist message on the economy appealing.And as Mr. Trump showed — and Mr. Youngkin confirmed — racially coded attacks do not necessarily repel Latino voters. They may even attract them. One of us, Ms. Gavito, was among the first to flag this disturbing trend. In focus groups in battleground states during the lead-up to the 2020 election, pollsters with Lake Research tested a message that denounced “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.” Both whites and Latinos found this message persuasive, but Latinos found it appealing at significantly higher rates than whites.This, then, is the Democrats’ problem: The fact that Republicans can drag race into the conversation with ease kicks the legs out from under the idea that Democrats can succeed by simply talking about more popular things. And the fact that racially coded attacks spur turnout among white voters without necessarily prompting a backlash among minority voters undermines the idea that mobilizing a diverse electorate can win elections for Democrats.That’s the bad news. The good news is, we know what a path forward looks like.First, Democrats must separate our (accurate and necessary) analysis of structural racism from our political strategy in a country where the electorate remains nearly 70 percent white — and as much as or more than 80 percent white in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Instead of ignoring race while Republicans beat us silly with it, Democrats must confront it and explain that powerful elites and special interests use race as a tool of division to distract hard-working people of all races while they get robbed blind. Then pivot back to shared interests. The pivot is critical: Without it, Democrats are simply talking past voters, while Republicans play on their racial fears.This strategy is known as the “race-class narrative,” pioneered by Prof. Ian Haney López of Berkeley, the author Heather McGhee and the messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio (whom we have worked with). To be clear, Democrats should not seek to impose a racial-justice frame; to the contrary, research found a focus on racial justice to be less persuasive than the race-class narrative. The strategy we suggest here is a middle way: It is more powerful than a racial-justice-only frame but also more powerful than a strategy that ignores race altogether. Race is the elephant in the room, and Democrats must stop fooling themselves into thinking that they can prevent it from becoming an issue.Second, Democrats must put aside the false choice between the tactics of persuasion and mobilization and embrace them both. By confronting race as a tool of division, and then pivoting to shared interests, Democrats can offer an optimistic, inspiring and even patriotic vision. This is the approach that rocketed Barack Obama to the White House. As an African-American, Mr. Obama was never allowed to ignore race. Forced to confront it, Mr. Obama offered Americans a vision that mobilized a broad, diverse coalition — while also persuading white voters. In 2008, Mr. Obama won the highest share of the white vote since Bill Clinton in 1996.Race has infused American history and politics since our founding. It threads through most aspects of daily life, and stirs up complicated feelings that Americans of all backgrounds find difficult to discuss. But Virginia showed that race is impossible to ignore.The simple fact is that Republicans have long used race to achieve victory, and Democrats are fooling themselves if they think they can avoid it. Democrats have to get real about race, and forge a way to win.Tory Gavito (@torygavito) is president of Way to Win, a donor network focused on expanding Democrats’ power in the Sun Belt, and lead of the Latinx Justice Fund. Adam Jentleson is the executive director of Battle Born Collective, a progressive strategy organization, a former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and the author of “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Philip Murphy Wins Narrowly in N.J. Governor's Race

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      The victory over Jack Ciattarelli, which ended Democrats’ 44-year re-election losing streak in the state, was far tighter than polls had predicted.Gov. Philip D. Murphy is the first Democratic governor to be re-elected in New Jersey in more than 44 years. His campaign focused on his record during his first term and his left-leaning approach to governing.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesPhilip D. Murphy, a New Jersey Democrat whose aggressive approach to controlling the pandemic became a focal point of the bid to unseat him, narrowly held onto the governor’s office in an unexpectedly close election that highlighted stark divisions over mask and vaccine mandates, even in a liberal-leaning state.With roughly 90 percent of the vote tallied, Mr. Murphy was ahead of his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, by less than 1 percentage point when The Associated Press called the race just before 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday after a protracted count. The bulk of the outstanding votes were in Democratic strongholds.For Democrats who had long assumed Mr. Murphy’s victory was assured even as the national electoral picture darkened, the 24 hours after polls closed proved tense: Mr. Ciattarelli at one point held a substantial lead.Every public opinion poll throughout the campaign had showed that Mr. Murphy would coast to an easy victory. But Mr. Ciattarelli hammered away at the state’s high taxes and polarizing issues such as whether schools should teach about systemic racism, and he repeatedly asserted that Mr. Murphy’s tough Covid rules were undermining personal liberty.Democratic strategists began whispering about a vague sense of anxiety that only intensified after rank-and-file Republicans turned out in force to the second debate in South Jersey in mid-October.Mr. Murphy’s narrow victory — and a key loss in the Virginia governor’s race — were widely interpreted as ominous signs for Democrats, potentially signaling voters’ dismay with President Biden, fears about the economy and pushback on cultural issues that were central to some G.O.P. campaigns. Still, a win by any margin was considered a significant milestone. Mr. Murphy, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive, is the first Democrat in more than four decades to be re-elected in the largely suburban state.“You know, we just had the most ‘New Jersey’ experience,” Mr. Murphy said, joking about his protracted victory during a speech to supporters in Asbury Park late Wednesday night. “I was on my way someplace, and it took us longer to get there than we planned.”At the end of the contentious race, Mr. Murphy sounded a conciliatory note.“If you want to be governor of all of New Jersey, you must listen to all of New Jersey. And New Jersey, I hear you,” Mr. Murphy said.Mr. Ciattarelli did not immediately concede, and a spokeswoman wrote on Twitter that it was “irresponsible” to declare a winner in the close race.Mr. Murphy, 64, had campaigned largely on his first-term record and his unabashedly left-leaning approach to governing a state where there are nearly 1.1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans.The pandemic, which has killed about 28,000 residents, hobbled much of the region’s economy and disrupted the education of 1.3 million public school students, persisted as the campaign’s defining issue.Mr. Murphy used executive orders to enforce some of the country’s strictest rules to curb the spread of the virus. Just before Memorial Day he was one of the last governors to repeal an indoor mask mandate. As new cases of the highly contagious Delta variant spiked during the summer, he was among the first to require teachers to be vaccinated or submit to regular testing.The coronavirus pandemic was the defining issue of Mr. Murphy’s first term.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesResidents surveyed in polls and academic studies gave Mr. Murphy some of his highest marks for the way he responded to the pandemic.But Mr. Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, made Mr. Murphy’s edicts a centerpiece of his campaign, using ads and stump speeches to attack vaccine mandates and mandatory masking in schools, and blaming Mr. Murphy’s lockdown orders for hurting small businesses and keeping students out of school for too long.Lindsey Laverty, 31, said it was Mr. Murphy’s mask and vaccine mandates that made her vote against him.“We need to get back to freedom and choice,” she said Wednesday in Somerville, N.J.The pandemic was by no means the only issue. Mr. Ciattarelli drove home a Wall Street-versus-Main Street theme and homed in on a 2019 comment by Mr. Murphy about taxes. “If you’re a one-issue voter and tax rate is your issue, either a family or a business — if that’s the only basis upon which you’re going to make a decision,” Mr. Murphy said, “we’re probably not your state.”Mr. Ciattarelli’s campaign plastered parts of the comment across billboards, on Facebook and in television ads all over the state.Mr. Murphy appeared to significantly underperform President Biden’s 2020 showing in highly educated suburban counties that had favored Democrats in the Trump era — the kind of counties that were central to the Democratic takeover of the House in 2018, including in New Jersey.“What’s changed in recent weeks is that President Biden’s approvals have taken a hit as the national mood has shifted,” said Michael Soliman, a veteran of New Jersey Democratic politics, referencing Mr. Biden’s weak poll numbers. He said Democrats — both progressive, like Mr. Murphy, and more conservative, like Steve Sweeney, the Democratic leader of the State Senate, who was still locked in a close race on Wednesday — were feeling the effect of that shifting national playing field.Michael DuHaime, who was the lead strategist for the Republican former Gov. Chris Christie’s victories in 2009 and 2013, said former President Donald J. Trump’s absence from the ballot returned some voters to the G.O.P. fold.“They didn’t like Donald Trump. It’s pretty simple. It wasn’t some endorsement to go far left,” Mr. DuHaime said.At campaign stops over the last week, Mr. Ciattarelli displayed a Boston Bruins jersey emblazoned with Mr. Murphy’s name as he reminded supporters of the governor’s Massachusetts roots and his white-shoe investment banking pedigree.In the end, more voters appeared to support the approach taken by Mr. Murphy, who in his first term established New Jersey as one of the most progressive states in the nation.Over the last four years, he locked in a deal to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15, raised the tax rate on income over $1 million and legalized marijuana. He made community college free for students in households with incomes of less than $65,000, restored voting rights to people on probation or parole, and authorized drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants.Results trickled in slowly after polls closed Tuesday at 8 p.m. from Democratic strongholds like Essex and Camden Counties, skewing the early totals and making it clear that the race would be far tighter than expected.Central to the delay in calling the race was the number of outstanding mail and provisional ballots.New Jersey did not permit local election officials to begin “preprocessing” ballots this year until Election Day, causing a backlog of more than 520,000 mail ballots to be counted in a single day. New voting equipment used to enable voters to cast ballots early, in person, also caused confusion; in some cases, voters had to use emergency provisional ballots to cast their votes — adding to the volume of ballots to tally.All 120 legislative seats were also on the ballot. Democrats were expected to retain control of Trenton, but did appear to be on track to lose several seats — including one held by Mr. Sweeney.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      Murphy Wins New Jersey Governor’s Race for a Second Term

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      Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. More

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      in US Politics

      Democratic governor Phil Murphy is New Jersey’s first to win re-election in 44 years

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      New JerseyDemocratic governor Phil Murphy is New Jersey’s first to win re-election in 44 yearsThe tight race was viewed as a referendum on Murphy’s – and more broadly, Democrats’ – leadership throughout the pandemic Maanvi Singh and agencies@maanvissinghWed 3 Nov 2021 20.04 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 20.29 EDTThe Democratic governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, has narrowly won reelection, eking out a victory that spared Democrats the loss of a second gubernatorial seat.Murphy, a former executive at Goldman Sachs and ambassador to Germany, became the first Democratic governor to win reelection in New Jersey in 44 years. He defeated Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican and former assembly member.Murphy won following a tight race that was widely viewed as a referendum on the Democrat’s leadership throughout the pandemic. The governor issued stringent health orders to slow the spread of Covid-19, and has earned high marks from constituents for his leadership. He was one of the first governors to require Covid-19 vaccinations for public school teachers.What you missed: results from five US races on TuesdayRead moreBut Ciattarelli, like many Republican politicians across the US, seized on growing backlash and frustrations over mask mandates, school closures and other pandemic restrictions, waging a formidable campaign with spending that nearly equalled the governor’s. But while Republican voters came out in much higher rates for Ciattarelli this year than they did for his GOP predecessor in 2017, Murphy’s advantages, including 1 million more registered Democrats, proved too much for the Republican to overcome.That the race remained so close well into Wednesday evening, however, is likely to be an encouraging sign for Republicans ahead of the 2022 midterms, especially given the party’s victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election, where Glenn Youngkin, a Republican businessman, staged an upset victory over the incumbent Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe.The Virginia race and other elections on Tuesday were seen as an early referendum on Joe Biden’s presidency and the Democrats’ national agenda, providing the first major tests of voter sentiment since the president took office. McAulliffe’s loss and Murphy’s narrow victory point to a potentially painful year ahead for Democrats as they try to maintain thin majorities in Congress.The closeness of the race has surprised experts, who watched public polls showing Murphy leading comfortably and looked to his party’s registration advantage of more than a million voters.“If you asked anybody several months ago within the state, I think anyone would have predicted a high double digit landslide for Murphy,” said Ashley Koning, the director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.Murphy built his campaign around the progressive accomplishments he signed into law, such as a phased in $15 an hour minimum wage and paid sick leave along with taxes on the wealthy. He also brought on Democratic allies, including Senator Bernie Sanders, to campaign for him.A spokesperson for Ciattarelli said Wednesday that the campaign was focused on the vote count and said that a possible legal pursuit of a recount was on the table. Murphy also called Wednesday morning for every vote to be counted.Ciattarelli is a former state Assembly member, serving until 2018. He’s the founder of a medical publishing company called Galen Publishing, and served as a local and county official in Somerset.TopicsNew JerseyUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Election Day Silver Linings!

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      Walking to the polls on Election Day, I suddenly had a vision of all my neighbors trying to break out of the doldrums by voting for Curtis Sliwa for mayor.Sliwa was the nominee of the desperate, massively outnumbered New York City Republican Party, and while he has plenty of conservative positions on issues like mandatory vaccinations (no), he is better known as an animal lover who has 17 cats in a studio apartment he shares with his wife.On Tuesday, Sliwa’s big moment involved an attempt to bring a kitty into the polling site. It was one of several dust-ups between the candidate and the election workers that ended with his ballot jamming the scanning machine.At about that point I suddenly wondered: What if this guy wins? It was not an outcome most people had ever considered, for obvious reasons. But gee, the country was in such a foul mood, the status of the Biden administration so subterranean. The image of Congress wasn’t really much better than that apartment full of cats. What if, just to show their profound irritation, the voters went Sliwa?Didn’t happen. The winner, Eric Adams, a Democrat, is a former police officer who ran a smooth campaign about his plans for reforming crime-fighting in New York. Early results suggest Sliwa will be very, very lucky to get a third of the vote. I am sharing this because I know a lot of you need some happy political news to tell friends over the weekend.Some Possible Post-Election Conversational Strategies for Liberal Democrats:— Find a few next-generation stars to burble over, even if they just got elected to your town’s zoning board of appeals.— Funny stories about other cats.— Ranting about Joe Manchin.Perhaps you noticed that, just before Election Day, Senator Manchin called a press conference to announce that he wasn’t sure he could support Joe Biden’s social services program because of his concern about the “impact it’ll have on our national debt.”Given Manchin’s super-status as a Democratic swing vote, we certainly have to pay attention to his fiscal conservatism and obsession with the national debt. After we stop to muse — just for a minute — that his state, West Virginia, gets about $2.15 in federal aid for every dollar its residents send to Washington.But back to the positive side of the elections — or at least the less-depressing-than-originally-perceived side. That big governor’s race in Virginia, won by the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, was maybe the worst blow of the evening for Democrats. But when you’re having those dinner table conversations — or, hey, drinking heavily at a bar — be sure to point out that the loser, Terry McAuliffe, is a former Virginia governor. His state seems to have a real problem with chief executives who hang around, and there’s a law that makes it impossible for a sitting governor to run for re-election. McAuliffe was trying for a comeback after his enforced retirement — a feat that’s been achieved only once since the Civil War.Didn’t work. Will you be surprised to hear that Donald Trump is taking credit?The other governor’s race, in New Jersey, was way more dramatic than expected, with incumbent Philip Murphy fighting off a surprisingly strong challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman. Very possible this one could still be in recount purgatory during the holidays.I really hope Murphy, a rather fearless leader in the war against Covid, is not being punished for vaccine mandates and mandatory school masking, which Ciattarelli complained about endlessly. Or that the irritable voters wanted to get back at their governor for remarking, a few years ago, that if you’re a person whose only concern is tax rates, New Jersey is “probably not your state.”Ciattarelli reportedly spent about $736,000 running that quote in a 10-day broadside of ads. But I’ll bet most New Jersey voters accept the governor’s view, however grudgingly. Almost all of them must have some state concerns besides taxes — schools? Street lighting? The end of black bear hunting?Fortunately, you won’t be expected to argue that Tuesday was one of the great days in the history of American democracy. Otherwise, some detail-oriented colleague might mention that a House district near Columbus was won by the chairman of the Ohio Coal Association.Yeah, and Minneapolis failed to pass its public safety program. It seems that Seattle will end up with a new law-and-order mayor rather than criminal justice reform.On the other hand, there were loads of stories to remind you how our country, for all its multitudinous failures to live up to the American dream, still also manages to come through. A lot. Boston elected its first woman and first person of color as mayor. Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Kan., each elected its first Black mayor. Cincinnati chose an Asian American mayor, and Dearborn, Mich.’s next mayor is going to be an Arab American Muslim.Cheer up, people. We made it through another election. Take the holidays off from politics if you want. Just ignore the new flood of emails asking you to donate to some worthy candidate’s quest for a House seat in 2022. What’s the rush? You’ll hear from them again next week. And the week after that. …The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What you missed: results from five US races on Tuesday

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      US newsWhat you missed: results from five US races on TuesdayWhile Virginia’s gubernatorial election caught national attention, the results of these local votes across four states are worth noting Gloria Oladipo@gaoladipoWed 3 Nov 2021 18.35 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 19.02 EDTTuesday was a busy day for voters across the country, as millions of Americans voted on local issues ranging from police reform to increasing voter accessibility.While some races garnered national attention – Glenn Youngkin’s win in the Virginia gubernatorial election, for example – other ballot questions remained more local.Here are five race results worth spotlighting from Tuesday.Republican Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia governor’s race in blow to BidenRead moreVoting reform referendums in New York StateIn New York, voters decided ‘no’ on two voting reform measures that would have allowed for same-day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting, a practice already implemented in dozens of states and during the coronavirus pandemic.On the question of same-day voter registration, 49% of people voted ‘no’ while 38.93% voted ‘yes’, according to City & State.While Democrats and voting rights groups were in favor of the proposals, Republicans, on the whole, opposed the attempts at increasing voter expansion, citing familiar claims of voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election, noted NPR.Alvin Bragg elected Manhattan DAAlvin Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, was elected the district attorney of Manhattan, the first Black person to be in the influential role, reports the New York Times.Bragg, who campaigned on ensuring fair treatment for all defendants while also maintaining public safety, was one of seven Democrats who ran for the nomination after incumbent Democrat Cyrus R Vance Jr did not run for reelection.A large feature of Bragg’s campaign was his experience with the criminal justice system, one that he said informed his career and differentiated him from other candidates.“Having been stopped by the police”, said Bragg in an interview with the Times. “Having a homicide victim on my doorstep. Having had a loved one return from incarceration and live with me”.‘Prop A’ Police Staffing Plan in Austin, TexasVoters in Austin, Texas overwhelmingly rejected ‘Prop A’ on Tuesday, a plan to hire hundreds of police officers despite city officials saying that significant budget cuts elsewhere would be needed to do so, reports the Austin American-Statesman.Of the more than 155,000 votes submitted, 68% voted against ‘Prop A’ with only 31% in favor of the proposition.The vast rejection of ‘Prop A’ came as a surprise to some who thought the results on the referendum would be tighter.Throughout the campaign, opposition came from multiple sides for the plan. Labor unions for Austin firefighters and EMS expressed their concerns about the plan, worried that jobs would be cut in those sectors to finance more police officers. Additionally, 10 out of 11 Austin council members were against the proposition.After the early voting election results, Austin mayor Steve Adler tweeted a statement of celebration about the measure’s failing.This election reaffirms our community’s belief that public safety for all requires a comprehensive system that includes properly staffing our police, but also our fire, EMS, and mental health responses as well.— Mayor Adler | Get vaccinated! (@MayorAdler) November 3, 2021
      State Senate President Race in New JerseyIn New Jersey, Edward Durr, a Republican truck driver who apparently spent approximately $153 to finance his campaign, will probably defeat incumbent Democrat state senate president Steve Sweeney, who has held the second most powerful political position in New Jersey for almost 12 years, reports NBC.While an official winner has not been called, with more than 99% of precincts reporting, Durr has received 52% of the vote while Sweeney received only 48%.In a YouTube interview, Durr said he entered the race after being denied a conceal carry permit despite having an unblemished record.Durr, who identifies as a “constitutional conservative”, said he was also sensed a growing distrust in Sweeney because of the Covid-19 pandemic and Sweeney’s inability to “challenge” New Jersey governor Phil Murphy’s Covid-19 executive orders, a shift in public opinion that Durr says contributed to his success as a candidate.In addition to opposing mask mandates and abortions, Durr also pledged to create a business friendly environment in New Jersey by cutting corporate, income, and other state taxes as well as property tax.Marijuana support in PhiladelphiaA referendum in Philadelphia that asked voters if they supported the legalization of marijuana overwhelmingly passed, signaling to Pennsylvania lawmakers where residents fall on the issue.With 96% of precincts reporting, about 72% of people voted ‘yes’ to urge the Pennsylvania state legislature to legalize marijuana, according to Philly Voice. The ballot question is not legally binding and doesn’t automatically make weed legal in the state, but symbolizes that the majority of voters want marijuana legalized.While Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf supports the legalization of recreational marijuana as a means of economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, drug legalization has faced opposition from Pennsylvania’s Republican legislature.Weed was decriminalized in Philadelphia in 2014, but recreational use of marijuana in Pennsylvania remains illegal. Two previous bills introduced in 2019 to legalize marijuana have failed.TopicsUS newsElections 2021US politicsPhiladelphiaNew YorkNew JerseyTexasnewsReuse this content More