she certainly will. dana bash, thank you very much for your sterling work as well this evening. much appreciate it. cnn s john king is here to break down the votes tonight behind tonight s big victories. john. piers, the map says it all what happened in new jersey tonight. look at all that red in what has traditionally been a big blue state. a landslide for chris christie. he wins re-election as new jersey s governor already thinking about running for president from 2016. a very different story in the gubernatorial election in virginia. a lot of red for ken cucinnelli. but because of the blue in the washington, d.c. suburbs in northern virginia terry mcauliffe eeking out a narrow victory thanks to his is up sport in the suburbs. exit polls, again a gender gap in presidential politics. favored president obama last time. christie will make the case even against a woman democratic opponent he won the women s vote
governor s race in virginia was a lot closer than just about anybody expected, but in the end former dnc chairman terry mcauliffe eeked out the victory. joining me is cnn s chief congressional correspondent dana bash. dana, more exciting tonight than we expected. the significance of ken cucinnelli losing in the way that he did. is it bad that he lost or is it encouraging for the tea party that it was quite close? reporter: probably all of the above. if you re a member of the tea party or if you are a staunch conservative who believes in the ideals that he was running on, not just in the general election but when he won the primary much to the chagrin as wolf was just alluding to of many republicans in this commonwealth of virginia and broadly across the country because they understand what a bellwether virginia tends to be with regard to the national election. but piers, i have to tell you,
reporter: that is an understatement. and this is excitement that people here thought they were going to seeing and feeling a victory they were going to be able to bask in a couple of hours ago. it what much tighter than even mcauliffe s closest supporters and campaign workers thought it was going to be. but a victory ace victory, anderson. and the reality of this race is that the people here in virginia didn t love either of the candidates. i mean if you look at sort of the general anecdotes from all the reporting that went on here, it s not like a new jersey where there was a very it was indeed a very popular political figure. this was a situation where people here seem to be deciding between two people that they didn t absolutely love. but at the end of the day, terry mcauliffe s whole message about ken cucinnelli, the current attorney general, being too extreme, being too much of a tea
what happened. but this is clearly not some huge rejection of the tea party. cucinnelli did a lot better. he was outgunned 10 to 1 in the last few days, last couple of weeks in advertising. mcauliffe was out early and just pounded cucinnelli with the anti-woman theme. a lot of social issues. and positioned himself as the centrist. and if there s one thing you can say that both chris christie and terry mcauliffe had in common in their campaigns it was selling themselves as i m the guy that can work with the other party and get things done for you. that was their come onnally. the irony in this year the two people who won are the two people who kind of tried to run to the center the fastest. and they were victorious. but i would argue in virginia, one of the important things was the government shutdown.
she s saying to me, chris, the job s not done yet. get back to work and finish the job for the people of new jersey. that s exactly what i ll do. i love you, new jersey. thank you very much. much closer this evening was that other gubernatorial race in the commonwealth of virginia, a contest that tea party-backed republican ken cucinnelli the state attorney general led for much of the night as election returns kept trickling in. though cnn ultimately called it for democrat terry mcauliffe little more than an hour ago as more districts from northern virginia reported back. mcauliffe is giving his victory speech right now. i want to go straight to wolf blitzer and john king back in washington, d.c. with the latest election night results. wolf, john? thanks very much, jake. these are the winners in the biggest contests tonight. in virginia, in the virginia governor s race the former democratic party chairman and clinton ally terry mcauliffe defeating the republican candidate and tea