Election Night 2009

The polls have been closed for an hour in New Jersey and just closed in New York. So far, with 14% of the vote tallied in New Jersey, Chris Christie is ahead, but it's far too early and too few votes tallied to determine the outcome.

New York's polls have just closed, so results are going to be a while.

Stay tuned. It will be a long evening.

UPDATE:
CNN is calling the Virginia governor's race for Republican Bob McDonnell.

UPDATE:
Christie continues leading in New Jersey with 28% of the vote tallied. Local elections in New Jersey are being reported here. Hudson, Bergen, Essex and Passaic Counties have yet to report in significant numbers, so expect Christie's early lead to subside somewhat as Democrat strongholds begin reporting.

UPDATE:
MSNBC says with 36% reporting, Christie remains leading with 52% to 42% for Corzine.

UPDATE:
NBC calls New York City's mayor's race for Mike Bloomberg, as if it was a surprise. Of course, Bloomberg spent nearly $100 million of his own money to buy the election win, and had to overturn New York City's term limits law to do it.

New Jersey continues to be too close to call. Politico's map shows the breakdown by county.

UPDATE:
With 64.3% reporting, Christie remains ahead, 50% to 43.8%. Oddly, they've called four counties, but aren't calling either Monmouth or Ocean Counties for Christie, even though more than 95% of the vote was in and Christie was ahead by more than 30 points.

UPDATE:
AP and Politico have both called New Jersey for Republican Chris Christie.

UPDATE:
Bloomberg looks like he's slipped some and the race is far closer than the early declaration of a win for Bloomberg would have suggested.

Meanwhile, early returns for NY-23 are coming in and so far Owens looks like he's ahead by about 5,000 votes. However, the key will be watching which counties are reporting so far.

UPDATE:
Corzine is giving his concession speech. He says he was privileged to be governor of the state. He's thanking his supporters and those in his administration.

All of his money and support of Presidents Obama and Clinton couldn't overcome the fact that Corzine lacked real achievements to campaign upon. The voters decided that Corzine just wasn't the guy to get the job done of getting the state back on the right track - cutting taxes, lowering spending, and making the state more competitive to build the economy.

UPDATE:
NY-23 looks like it's going to go for Bill Owens, much to the consternation of Hoffman supporters. I'll have to analyze the turnout and county figures to see what happened, but it appears that Owens got his supporters to turn out, while Hoffman didn't, despite all the attention on the race and the out-of-district support.

Going back to New Jersey, Corzine made sure to thank Chris Daggett for participating in the race and the debates. There's just a wee bit of irony there, seeing how Democrats actually proferred a pro-Daggett robocall.

UPDATE:
There's about 10,000 absentee ballots to be counted. Those aren't going to go for Hoffman because they were likely cast well in advance of Scozzafava dropping out, so they would likely split between Owens and Scozzafava. That means that there may not be enough votes to bring Hoffman back to take the seat. With 71% of votes counted, Owens has 49% to 45% for Hoffman.