Election Night 2013 Review: A review of the big 3 races in the United States on November 5th, 2013 including how Democrat Terry McAufille edges Ted Cuccinelli in close race.

Democrats return to power in New York City

1. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wins big in re-election.
2. Democrat Terry McAufille edges Ted Cuccinelli in close race.

by Thomas Manning
Even though this year’s election night is termed as an “off year election”, a term given to election years which have no national elections, ex presidential and or congressional/ senate elections, there were 3 elections that highlighted the night of November 5^th 2013. The three races that took center stage and where the ones that the political world took most notice of on the national level, were the New York City mayoral race, where the city looked to replace outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg, in Virginia, the state looked to elect a new governor and the third was in New Jersey where Governor Chris Christie looked to get re-elected for a 2^nd term in office.

The first major election of the night took place in New York City and had the citizens of the city take part in an election in which mayor Bloomberg was not on the ballot for the first time in 8 years. The election which had two candidates, Democrat, Bill Deblasio and the Republican Joe Lhota on completely different sides of the political and the role of governing facing off in the biggest city in the world.

With the latest polling precincts reporting at 84%, the results show that the Democrat, Bill Deblasio with a resounding victory over the Republican, Joe Lhota, by a margin of 73.1% of the vote to Mr.Lhota’s 24.6%. Deblasios’ main campaign theme promised to, if elected tackle inequality in what he terms a “tale of two cities” and that “the Challenges we face have been decades in the making, and the problems we set out to address will not be solved overnight. But make no mistake: The people of this city have chosen a progressive path. And tonight we set forth on it, together as one city.” The other main promise of Mr. Deblasio was to end the NYPD’s policy of “stop and frisk”, a policy that current mayor Bloomberg and police commissioner Ray Kelly credit to the reduction in crime in the city. Mayor elect Deblasio take’s office January 1st, 2014.

The second election which had a national following took place in the garden state of New Jersey in which the reaction was not so much of the result in which incumbent governor Chris Christie  beat challenger Barbara Bueno, 60.5% to  38.0% but what was to come in the future for the re-elected governor elect Chris Christie. The strong showing of the governor’s re-election results have already started the talk among many in the political world that the governor’s political ambitions are firmly set on the 2016 republican presidential nomination.

The talk about 2016 intensified after the final analysis of the vote had been counted which showed that Governor Christie carried half of the Hispanic voting populations, along with increasing his vote with the African American community by 10 points since the last election and carrying a majority of the woman voters in the garden state an evaluation of the results which help to bolster his argument for becoming the republican nominee in 2016.

The third and final major election of the night, was in Virginia where like in the New York City mayoral race, it was an election of the two polarizing sides of the political spectrum with the Republican candidate Ted Cuccinelli facing Democrat Terry McAufille and a third party libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis. With 100% of the precincts reporting in, Terry McAufille won the election with 48% of the vote against Ted Cuccinell’s 45.5% of the vote and Robert Sarvis’s 10.0% of the vote.

This election was watched closely around the country because of the debate with the Affordable care act and former attorney general Ted Cuccinelli being one of the first attorney generals in the United States to file a lawsuit against the bill. This election was also being watched closely because of the recent government shutdown and an interest to see how the voting public would react to the shutdown and who they would hold more responsible.