I have a real hard time believing Obama's approval rating could be 50%.
In the Congressional elections, GOP candidates got total around 54% of the vote to Democrats 42%. And that is with the losses of Nye and Boucher, two of the most fiscally conservative Democrats in the House who would barely admit to being Democrats, and Connolly narrowly winning by opposing Obama on taxes.
All of the congressional districts that changed hands are to the right of the state as a whole. I think that is important to remember before drawing too many conclusions from this month's elections. I do agree that Obama at 50% is suspect, but he doesn't need a majority in any of those districts to win the state.
sure, the 9th is substantially to the right, the 2nd and 5th are slightly to the right. the 11th, which almost switched hands, is slightly to the left. my point in bringing up the Congressional races was that, when you total up every vote from every district and split them by party, the Republicans had a 12-point lead - which suggests something significant in terms of public opinion in Virginia even with a district set-up that benefits the GOP.
