unpopularity. that s what s so fascinating. what i find is what people are reacting to on the moderate side is not so much their enthusiasm for the president right now as much as their antipathy towards attackers. and not only that, chris, this is a huge if you re the national republicans and you re looking at this exit poll, you should potentially be in full panic mode if it turns out that this is what the electorate looks like and mcauliffe does win. because the president s at a 46% approval rating. normally you would say that s bad news for the democrats. but mcauliffe still was able to win. it shows what you just said is absolutely right. it s where the republicans position themselves here. outside of where virginia believes the republican party should be. so this is if you re a republican party strategist, this is a very scary moment for you because the president s not does not have a good approval rating here in virginia tonight. and guess what. it still looks like it s
they ve been pressing that the public has turned on. and so it s about the shape of the electorate. later tonight we re going to get to the other look at this country from the northeastern look where a relatively moderate republican, non-tea party conservative is up for re-election. looks like he might well win it. yet here we re getting early in the evening a look. chuck, last word. chuck? yeah, go ahead, chris. i just wanted you to throw a little thought here about new jersey so we don t get understa unbalanced here. we re getting a hard look at virginia here. what will we get to maybe back that up in new jersey where they say, you know, we like this more moderate republican. and that s going to be the contrast tonight, right? to me this election day has been about not cuccinelli versus mcauliffe or obama care and all that. to me it s about the republican
virginia will vote the same will not elect a governor opposite of the party in the white house, but elect a governor of the same party in the white house. chuck, great reporting. we ll be back to you again and again tonight. thank you howard fineman, expertise at the table and david corn. couldn t think of better guys to have here. coming up, terry mcauliffe keyed in on women s issues to win votes. it s a strategy they will try to use against republicans. the gender gap, a big plus for democrats. we ll see if it pays off tonight. the virginia governors race, too early to call by the experts. but msnbc mcauliffe with the lead. this is hardball, the place for politics. when we made our commitment to the gulf, bp had two big goals:
we have exit polled virginia now every time we talked about the president s job approval rating. as virginia goes, so goes the nation. this is the lowest approval rating we ve recorded on election day in virginia since he s been in office. he had a 48% approval rating in 2009. down to 46% tonight. when the health care law has a higher approval rating in virginia than the president himself, the folks in the white house got a realize here in virginia, if they got a problem here they got a problem nationally. isn t it interesting and i ve watched it on this program every night. although the president is down, there s no doubt the morale of his people is down right now because of the relentless assault on his program, health care, and the other issues that have bugged him like syria and the rest of it. there hasn t been a happy cloud scene in months now. his enemies are much less popular than him. in fact, they re growing in the
help the gulf recover and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we ve added cutting-edge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twenty-four-seven. and we re sharing what we ve learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. our commitment has never been stronger. we continue to watch the numbers come in down in virginia where nbc news is characterizing the governors race there as too early to call. but democrat terry mcauliffe is leading. back with more results in a minute. customer erin swenson ordered shoes from us online