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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Well, it might have been a good night for Democrats in New York City and maybe in Boston and a few other places, but it was not one on either side of New York City. Long Island, really bad for Democrats, New Jersey, big questions still in play. When you look at the two states that voted for governor, New Jersey and Virginia, there were only those two. By extension, it was not a good night for Joe Biden and for the Democratic Party as it hopes to keep power in Congress next year. This, of course, can all be over-interpreted. There's so much that will happen between now and then.

For the blue team and national context last night, not good, leaving new questions to be answered. With me now, Elena Schneider, national political correspondent for POLITICO, and Nancy Solomon, who covers New Jersey for WNYC. Welcome back, both of you. Nancy, I hope you got at least some sleep, especially with the cold you're rocking right now. If you were up waiting for a result, you would have pulled an all-nighter. Where do things stand in the New Jersey governor's race as we speak?

Nancy Solomon: Well, I did get a few hours of sleep, but you can tell from my voice I'm not doing too well. I got up at 6:00 and Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican, was ahead of Phil Murphy, the incumbent Democrat by a little less than 1,200 votes. Since then, more votes have been counted. The AP widget is now moving again. It was stalled for many hours, I guess they went to bed.

Now, it looks like Murphy is up by about 7,000 votes, which would have seemed minuscule last night, but at the moment, it seems like a pretty big lead compared to where he was. The mail-in ballots that are going to get counted all week are expected to break his way as well. Things are looking a little better, but I don't think there's any lipstick you can put on this pig. This was a disaster for Democrats and it had down-ballot effects as well.

Brian: In terms of who might win, ultimately, Nate Cohn from The Times tweeted around 1:30 this morning, "There's still no decision in New Jersey where the count is close and the data is murky, but county by county, it's becoming clear that there's still a lot of Democratic-leaning mail ballots left. That might be enough for Murphy." How much do you agree with that analysis?

Nancy: I agree. I think that's what we're seeing is that these mailed-in ballots are coming in. Not just because it's not that the mail arrived, but they were there and they're getting counted. It's believed that Democrats prefer mail-in voting more than Republicans. That's why it's breaking to Murphy.

Brian: Before we bring in Elena with the national context of this, I see that Bergen County is trending on Twitter right now. For those of you who don't know New Jersey counties, Bergen is right outside Upper Manhattan in the northern suburbs. Cross the George Washington Bridge, you arrive in Bergen County. Trending on Twitter right now with some Republicans calling for an audit, a word they've used, before because Bergen County flipped to blue this morning when it was red last night with 100% of the votes counted according to the numbers this morning.

Now, we should remember that Bergen County went for Joe Biden by the numbers that I have, 57 to 41 over Donald Trump. It wouldn't be surprising that Bergen County goes for Phil Murphy. What's surprising is that it's so close, whether Murphy gets a few more votes or Ciattarelli gets a few more votes. Talk about Bergen County. We have a lot of listeners there.

Nancy: It's the Ohio of New Jersey. It's often said that as goes Bergen County, as goes New Jersey, that it's a very large, very suburban county. It looks like Murphy is winning it by a very small margin. I think what we're going to see is a lot of-- Sorry, Brian. [coughs]

Brian: That's all right. Do you need a minute? We'll give Nancy a minute here.

Nancy: Let me see if I can finish some sentences.

Brian: Go ahead.

Nancy: I think we're going to see Republicans contesting elections up and down the state over the next few weeks.

Brian: Elena Schneider from Politico. Joe Biden won Virginia last year by 10 points. Hillary Clinton and Obama both won Virginia too, and Democrats had controlled both houses of the legislature. The Democrat for Governor last night lost. What just happened?

Elena: Well, what just happened is Joe Biden is very unpopular right now. He's underwater in terms of his support in Virginia and nationally, and we're living in an environment in which national trends can have real steep implications for a state race, for a gubernatorial race. If you drill into the messaging here, that's where it plays out too. Terry McAuliffe, who was trying to run for, not quite reelection, Virginia, they only allow one term per governor, but you can run again. He was elected back in 2013 for the first time, and he was trying to run for this position again, and he really tried to tie Glenn Youngkin, this former private equity chief executive to Donald Trump.

You couldn't get more than a few seconds at a McAuliffe rally without Trump coming out of his mouth. Because the idea or the theory was that they needed to excite and amp the Democratic base, and nothing has excited the Democratic base more than Donald Trump over the last five years. That was not enough in order-- Clearly, it was not even close to enough to getting Democrats excited or to counteract the natural political weather of an off-year election in which the party in power is trying to hold a seat here. Democrats were always going to face a tougher road in Virginia.

I just think that they are certainly waking up disappointed that not only was it a tougher road, it was an impossible road. They weren't able to hold on to it. Glenn Yankin was able to do this incredibly intricate, [chuckles] difficult footwork around Donald Trump, where he was able to both embrace him as far as he wanted to without bringing him in and basically holding him at arm's length the entire time. He embraced the endorsement, but beyond that, Trump really was not something that that Glenn Youngkin talked about, nor did he want him there in the state to campaign for him. All of those elements, all of Biden's really sagging approval ratings, Glenn Yankin really effectively leaning into winning over independence, a perfect storm for Republicans to pull this off in a blue winning state.

Brian: The biggest city in the state, Virginia Beach, considered a real swing district. A lot of Virginia Beach is suburban, actually, even though it's a city. I used to live around there. It went for Trump by five points in 2016. Then it went for Biden by five points last year. The Republican Glenn Youngkin was winning by nine points last I looked last night. Also around the rural parts of the state, Youngkin did even better than Trump did in heavily pro-Trump counties. Can you break down the Republican side of that?

Elena: Absolutely. Youngkin had to do a number of things in order to win in a state that is still trending blue in presidential year. It's important to remember this is an off-year, the electorate in an off-year, so a non-presidential year tends to be a little older, a little whiter, and that generally does not bode well for Democrats. For Youngkin to take advantage of the natural electorate here, he needed to blow it out in rural counties, particularly in southwestern Virginia with voters who had come out largely for the first time for Trump.

He was able to absolutely blow away expectations in those rural counties, and then he also had to peel away independents and swing voters in suburban counties. He was able to do that, as you mentioned in Virginia Beach, but it was also in places like Loudoun County, which is outside of Washington, DC, where he only lost it by 10 points, while Donald Trump lost it by 25 in 2020. Another example is Fairfax County, which is just outside of Washington, DC, the most populous county in the state. Even though it was an easy McAuliffe hold, he was able to improve his numbers there over Donald Trump's.

Again, so he wasn't hemorrhaging in these suburban counties the way that we've seen Republicans and Trump do in 2020. Why this is setting off such panic within the Democratic Party is because they built their victories in 2018. They built their majority in the House and Joe Biden's path to the White House in 2020 was built on these suburban voters who rejected Donald Trump. Built on these outer-ring suburbs places like Orange County, California, Gwinnett County, outside of Atlanta, key places outside of Philadelphia and in Milwaukee. Those are the counties where Democrats were able to build their majority. If those voters are slipping away the way that they are in Virginia in 2022, that spells a really, really tough road for them moving forward.

Brian: Here I think is a very important follow-up question to that. Was it mostly turnout? Republicans as the party out of power were motivated to defeat Democrats in this election certainly Democrats, maybe not massively inspired by Biden right now, were maybe more complacent and didn't turn out as much. I think it's different, especially in terms of what it would forecast for the 2022 congressional elections if Youngkin actually won independent suburban women who voted Republican in the past but then got turned off by Donald Trump. If they went back to the Republicans, those same voters some of them, that's one story. If the Republican base turned out but the new enlarged democratic base was just met and stayed home, that's a different story and a less threatening one for the Democrats. Can you tell yet which it was?

Elena: I think we still have work to do to match who showed up with the voter file. That takes time, [chuckles] that takes enormous amount of time and energy on the part of both parties who are going to be furiously working on this in the next couple of weeks to figure out and piece together that story. I think that you're right in that the turnout here was historic for an off-year. The last record for an off-year election was in 2017 when Ralph Northam won. 2.6 million people showed up. I haven't checked this morning, but I think we are close if not surpassing 3 million people who participated the cycle in an off-off-year and that is an enormous amount of turnout.

I certainly think that you can't ignore the fact that rural voters and Trump voters showed out in a big way for Republicans, that there was an enthusiasm edge that they had. We're still going to have to spend some time calculating whether these were people who switched parties in these suburban districts or if Democrats stay home. I think that for him to hold those margins, there had to be at least some ticket flipping from last year for him to be able to pull this off given how many people participated. It's still early, we're still going to need to do a lot of matching to the voter file. That means figuring out exactly who showed up and how they voted, but I think that the early signs still are pretty bleak for democrats.

Brian: Nancy Solomon, same question for New Jersey as the democratic incumbent Phil Murphy sits at a tie right now with Jack Ciattarelli the Republican challenger who wasn't supposed to be this close. Can you tell yet if there were a lot of Biden-Ciattarelli voters or if the Democrats were just mad and stayed home and the Republicans were very motivated?

Nancy: I think what we're going to find out is that it's both. Just from a look of this from the counties that came in for Ciattarelli that were Biden counties, I think it's the same dynamic you were just discussing that moderate New Jersey voters, particularly white suburban voters and exurban, the outer ring of the suburbs. I think they came back to the Republican party now that Trump was not an issue as far as they were concerned. Ciattarelli did a good job of making a case to them despite some of his early mistakes that he is a moderate and not a Trump Republican. I think that dynamic is going on, and at the same time, you had Murphy leading in every single poll by double digits, and that had to have depressed democratic turnout and maybe a level of lack of enthusiasm maybe.

I think it will probably be said many times this week about the mistakes that Murphy made during the campaign not getting out there quite enough, and making his case about what he was doing for middle-class New Jerseyans. You and I have talked about this quite a bit and the whole storyline around property taxes, so I think it really is going to turn out to be both. I think we're going to see not getting the vote out in the straw in the democratic strongholds as much as he did in 2017, and then many independent and moderate New Jerseyans going back to the Republican party.

Brian: Few more minutes breaking down the results of the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, the only two gubernatorial races in the United States yesterday. Both bad news for the Democrats, a loss in Virginia, undecided as of right now in New Jersey which was not expected, and how this all forecasts how either party will run in the 2022 congressional midterms next year with Elena Schneider from POLITICO and WNYC's Nancy Solomon. I want to get in a couple of phone calls as well as people are calling in from both states 212-433-WNYC 433-9692. What just happened in New Jersey or Virginia, listeners? You help us report this story. 212-433-9692. Kylie in Northern Virginia, you're on WNYC. Hi Kylie.

Kylie: Good morning. I'm a New Jersey native and I now live in Northern Virginia, in Loudoun County actually, so that breakdown of Loudoun County was quite interesting. I just wanted to get a response to this thought from your guests. To me, it just seems like aside from the Stacey Abrams push in Georgia, that Republican strategists to me just seem to play to win. I'm a registered Democrat, but I don't really want to go up in a dog fight. I feel like Republican strategists really do play the wind and Democratic strategists seem to be trying to be right or uphold these political ideals or these democratic ideals. In my heart, it just feels like Democratic candidates win only when Republican candidates lose. I just wonder if you all can just talk about the difference in strategies, and both of these races are great examples about just how Republican and Democratic strategists approach elections differently.

Brian: Elena, you want to talk to Kylie?

Elena: Yes. That's a great question. Look, I think that if we're looking at just Virginia and how the different strategies there played out, clearly Terry McAuliffe thought that linking Glenn Youngkin to Donald Trump was going to be the recipe that would win and he had some evidence that that might work. In California, we saw Gavin Newsom was struggling with that recall effort. They turned Larry Elder, that's the Republican who was running against him and they're into an acolyte of Donald Trump and it turned around for him. I think that often political pundits and staffers and strategists can maybe sometimes overlearn or relearn things of the most recent election and try and take the, ''Okay this worked here, it's got to work in the next race.''

There was certainly an attempt to try and do that, and whether or not that was too backward-facing, I think it goes to your point of can Democrats only win if Republicans are losing? That's maybe a fair criticism of how Terry McAuliffe approached this where rather than focusing on what he was going to do for Virginia which came through in some ways, but he did not really run on his record from 2013 onwards. He did not really focus as much on what he could or would do for education or for dealing with people's pocket bush issues. It was really primarily focused on a nationalized Donald Trump focus and I think that that backward-looking focus is problematic when fundamentally voters in an ideal world, any candidate wants to be running on a positive forward-looking hopeful message.

I think that Terry McAuliffe really struggled to figure out a way to do that with the-- He is like, ''Let's hope that the base turns out and if we just try and link to Donald Trump that'll be enough.'' Clearly, that wasn't enough and I'm already hearing from Democrats that I'm speaking to that they're recalculating and recasting how they're envisioning what they're going to do in 2020 in terms of how they're going to run around the messaging there, that simply trying to stick Trump to any Republican just does not seem to necessarily work.

Brian: Kylie, could I ask you a question as an individual citizen and individual voter in Loudon County, Virginia. A lot of the coverage that I saw of that race said that the Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin really played on white voters' fears of critical race theory as something that may not actually be getting taught in the Loudoun County and other public schools in the state, but that somehow he got them to be afraid of how race or something that he called critical race theory is being taught. I call this the white fragility vote.

He got a lot of white people to feel like their kids in school are going to be made to feel badly about themselves by telling of American history that includes a lot of the bad stuff that happened along racial lines, and so he ran on appealing to that fear. Sure enough, the exit polls that I saw from NBC News last night indicated that a quarter of the voters in Virginia said education was their number one issue. Those voters went for Youngkin by 18 points. I'm just curious if you saw, as a Loudoun County resident, that dynamic playing out and how it looked to you.

Kylie: I think that's a good question. What I will say is I paid very little attention, admittedly. I paid very little attention during this election and the two things that I'm walking away from right now. Number one, everything that I did here was about schools and what your kids are being taught and if that message really did rise to the top. The second big takeaway from me is I had no idea that Terry McAuliffe was governor before. That did not come to mind. [crosstalk] I think the juxtaposition of those two points speaks exactly to what you're talking about because that was the presence and the absence of messages that I walked away with. Not that I was that tuned in, but I definitely--

Brian: Thank you for your one voter's view, Kylie. Thank you very much. Roseanne in Fairfield, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Roseanne.

Roseanne: Oh, hi. I agree with your commentators, but I do want to say that I think Democrats have to realize too that many people in our country now are moderate to conservative and that's one of the reasons I voted for Joe Biden and I still have a lot of faith in him, but also Governor Murphy, truthfully I'm not happy with some of the things he did or didn't do when he had Kate Brennan who was on his staff, had a claim against someone who assaulted her. It didn't seem that he did much about it, and also with the Edna Mahan prison.

The women who were there were assaulted and abused and he didn't do much about wanting to fire the present Superintendent and that angered many Democrats, such as Loretta Weinberg, who was a Democrat from Bergen County who didn't run again. I felt terrible. I think that really he should have been fired, and the prison had been investigated for years. It wasn't anything new. When I was watching his briefings and reporters would ask, he didn't address it, but I also think that most people who are lower and middle class feel neglected.

Brian: Roseanne, thank you very much. We're going to go to another New Jersey caller and in Englewood, which is in Bergen County, which we've been talking about a lot in this segment. Hi, Anne.

Anne: Hi, I don't dispute what the last caller talked about, but overall it seems like Murphy was a good governor, but my point is that I feel like the Democratic party in New Jersey, which I am an elected district leader you might call, is incredibly lazy and complacent. No boots on the ground, no mobilization. I feel like I didn't receive a single robocall about Murphy at all. I got more from school board candidates. I feel that the unions in Bergen County have been so diminished. The Labor Movement.

We used to have a lot of boots on the ground with the Labor Movement. More I'd say than with the organized base of the Democratic party, the district leaders. [chuckles] I'm just stunned by the amount of laziness and complacency and lack of organization of the Democratic party in New Jersey and I feel like that plays a big role, especially when it's a turnout game. I'm very frustrated by it. I hope we can change.

Brian: Anne, thank you very much. As we run out of time, a last word from each of you, Nancy Solomon, to those two New Jersey callers we just heard from. Anything you want to say, and also how does this race get resolved if this is ending in a virtual tie as of right now and I realized that there are many mail-in ballots yet to be counted. It may not end in just within a 1% margin of victory for one candidate or the other, how do they resolve it?

Nancy: I think the losing candidate is probably going to ask for a recount, which by law, that can be done. It's not automatic. At this point, it looks like Murphy's going to pull up in way by just enough votes to squeak this one out. How much do we have to wait for the mail to come in the next couple of days? I doubt it that much. I think there's probably going to be enough to call this race by the end of today or tomorrow. The calls are great. I think get out the vote. The Democrats failed and we didn't even have a chance to talk about the Senate and Assembly races. The Democrats lost multiple seats, including they may lose the Senate president, Steve Sweeney.

Get out the vote definitely was a problem. It seemed like Murphy got a very late start that he was counting on advertising and on his lead in the polls. Then it's seemed to ramp up in the last week, but yes, it was a huge problem, and I do think that some of Murphy's problems around the Edna Mahan and the Katie Brennan case. That certainly was a stain on his four years, but he definitely appeals to progressives still. The question is he did not run a campaign talking to moderate voters in New Jersey and they are a force.

Brian: The latest numbers that we have as of when we started this segment, Murphy at 49.8% of the vote, Ciattarelli at 49.5% of the vote. With 88% of the votes counted, we will see what happens through the day. Elena Schneider from POLITICO, last question for you. Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC last night said there's always a temptation to over-interpret governor's races in terms of federal races for the next year. How much do you agree?

Elena: I agree that that was once the case, but I think that we are living in an environment in which people more often get their news from MSNBC or Fox News than they do from their own local television affiliates. If that's where you're getting your political news, you're going to have a national lens on your own state and local politics. It's not to say that good candidates, good campaigns can't still win in this environment. I think that's what he's hitting at this idea that Democrats are absolutely doomed next cycle. Look, I think that there is a very good chance that they are going to face a very difficult year in which they already had incredibly slim majorities, and so to hold on to those was already going to be very difficult in 2022.

I think he's urging people to not over-interpret as in saying all is lost. I agree with that, but to the extent that you shouldn't or that it's not relevant. I think it's untrue because we live both in a nationalized environment also ultimately. These are clues for where the national electorate is. Yes, things might and will change over the next year, but I think it shows a trendline, a direction, and it's happening across these two states. The same problems that are happening for Democrats in Virginia are happening for them, and in New Jersey, vice versa. The [unintelligible 00:28:12] Republicans in Virginia are the same that we see in New Jersey. It gets a little harder to dismiss those results when there's some consistency across states, and also the more nationalized environment that we're living in.

Brian: Elena Schneider, national political reporter for POLITICO, Nancy Solomon, who covers New Jersey for WNYC and Gothamist, you're both troopers to keep going this late into the morning after following so many results, so late into the night. Thank you so much for coming on, get some sleep.

Nancy: Thanks, Brian.

Elena: Thanks, Brian.

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