rejected democrat, terry mcauliffe. his five-point lead two months ago turned into defeat to republican glenn youngkin, the projected winner. now, parts of youngkin s campaign may become part of the playbook for future gop candidates. let s start in new jersey with jason carroll. i understand votes there still being counted, jason. yeah, they are still counting the votes. they re going to be counting down to the wire. at last check, i think we saw murphy was up by some 15,000 votes. still much closer than democrats thought it would be. c the reason they were able to close the gap is because they were able to hammer murphy on issues like mask mandate, critical race theory and property taxes. as you know, folks here in new jersey pay some of the highest property taxes in the country. murphy, for his part, basically
a guarantee, but a smoother path to victory for governor murphy and this is within less than a point at this point, of course. yeah, well i think the lesson from new jersey, i m going to contradict the senator, is that all politics is local is not really true anymore. it s that all politics are national and a receding tide lowers all votes. new jersey did not have the big flash point issues or intense national focus that virginia did and yet you see the democratic vote share decline at least potentially at least as much as it did in virginia and i think what that tells you is the centrality of the president s approval in modern u.s. elections, you know n 2013 when mcauliffe won the first time, obama s approval in virginia was also underwater in the election, but mcauliffe was able to win because only about 80% of the people who disapproved of obama voted against him.