FOUR DAYS TO GO - AT 9:05 A.M. ET:  This year's off-year elections are four days away.  Unless something really goes wrong, the GOP should win an easy victory in the Virginia governorship, now held by Tim Kaine, the Democratic national chairman.  (Ah, revenge is sweet.)

In New Jersey, the governorship is a tossup, thanks to a third-party candidate who's taking votes away from the Republican challenger to unpopular Governor Jon Corzine.  My guess:  Corzine will pull it out, with a bit of help from little ACORNS.  I hope I'm wrong.

In California, San Fran area, a Dem is the easy winner in a congressional race. 

In New York City, Mayor Mike Bloomberg should sail to a third term, meaning no Democrat will have been elected mayor in heavily Democratic New York in 20 years. 

But the juiciest race is in upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District, where an upstart conservative is challenging the GOP's establishment candidate, a woman who is slightly to the left of Leon Trotsky.  The election is being held to fill the seat vacated by a Republican congressman who resigned to become secretary of the army.

It now appears that the upstart, with endorsements from Sarah Palin, New York Governor George Pataki, and others, has a real shot, as Michael Barone reports:

The special election in the 23rd congressional district of New York increasingly looks like a two-man race, with the woman candidate, Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava, skittering into third place. Yesterday I referenced Mark Blumenthal’s analysis of two polls, both commissioned by supporters of Conservative nominee Doug Hoffman, showing Hoffman ahead of Democratic nominee Bill Owens, with Scozzafava well behind. I agreed with Blumenthal’s conclusion that there was nothing indicating the polls were bogus, though polls in any special election, especially one with three candidates, need to be viewed with caution.

Now comes a third poll which tends to confirm those two, and this one was commissioned not by Hoffman supporters but by the pro-Democratic website Daily Kos; moreover, Kos himself endorsed Scozzafava. This one shows Owens leading Hoffman, but by the statistically insignificant margin of 33%-32%, with only 21% for Scozzafava. Averaging the three polls together, we get Hoffman 33%, Owens 30% and Scozzafava 18%. It sure looks like a two-man race to me.

COMMENT:  We'll be blogging through Tuesday night's returns, and will follow this closely.  It's unusual for any conservative in New York to create excitement, but if Hoffman wins he becomes an instant hot property.

October 30, 2009