Does anyone really believe the nonsense that any election is a referendum on Obama? Here’s the referendum on Obama: 11/6/2012.

It’s an easy headline, I know, and so tempting on this, the one-year anniversary of Obama’s history-making hope-bringing win in the 2008 presidential election. He stood there in Grant Park before thousands of screaming fans and the nation, and promised to bring CHANGE, and he didn’t. Booooo on Obama, clearly the REPUBLICANS are the answer!

Sorry guys, it’s just not that simple. Or glib. Elections are also about people — the people running and the people voting. Occasionally, they are about the people who come to a state to stump for a highly unpopular billionaire who made all his money on Wall Street and doesn’t wear seatbelts. But there’s more to it than that.

Take New Jersey, since we’re already there. Wow, Republicans haven’t won a statewide election there since 1997. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a whopping 700,000. Last year, Obama won New Jersey by 16 points. What a stunning rejection! Well, not so fast. Corzine was there too — and his approval rating was under 40%. Actually, it’s been down there pretty comfortably for a while — as in, since mid-2008. Can’t really blame that on Obama; he didn’t even have the nomination ’til June.

Doesn’t matter — Newt Gingrich will — and he’s not gonna let a little thing like facts get in his way:

According to Mike Allen of The Politico, network exit polls showed that 85 percent of Virginia voters and 90 percent of New Jersey voters were worried about the economy. Governor Haley Barbour put it best: “It’s not about the President personally…the President’s policies are unpopular.”

Zing! Except for the actual results from New Jersey exit polls asking if they approved or disapproved of how Obama was doing his job. Results: 57% approved, 42% disapproved. Also: When asked if Obama was a factor in their vote, 55% of voters in Virginia said no. 60% said no in New Jersey. (Mike Allen had those numbers, too.)

This does not mean there wasn’t concern about the economy — there was, and how (Newt got that right: 85/90% worth in VA and NJ). But hmm, who do people like to blame when things go south? The people under whose watch it went there — aka “incumbents” or “the people for whom yesterday was not a good day.”

Meanwhile, can we just look at Virginia for a moment? Be honest: Is Creigh Deeds your ideal candidate? Bleh, not exactly Mr. Charisma, is he? But aside from that, Newsweek‘s Gaggle has a smart and well-reasoned argument for why a statewide election might have been, you know, particular to that state. And those candidates. Yes, it’s easier (and better ratings!) to blame Obama, but at some point it has to make, you know, sense.

Oh and by the way, Bloomberg? An incumbent expected to sail through to the finish, cutting it close enough to freak out an entire nation of watchers. Was that a referendum on Obama? (Yes! He’s almost a democrat!) Actually, no. Phil Bump lays out the voting blocks and patterns behind the Bloomberg almost-loss (when you’re this close in your third term, you can’t call that a win).

And let’s not even go to NY 23. But I think it’s safe to say that if there was a referendum there, it wasn’t about Obama.

Here’s what else was not about Obama: turnout. Even as David Plouffe is selling the Obama magic on his book tour, it was decidedly absent in this election. Where was the ground game? The will.i.am videos? The Great Schleps? The last election was about a great wave of change, and this election is part of its execution. It’s just different. So were voting patterns — a lot of people who came out last time didn’t this time. Howard Fineman on MSNBC called it “a revolution in reverse…it was as much about people who didn’t turn out in Virginia and maybe as much about people who don’t turn out in New Jersey. The Obama supporters didn’t show up in anywhere near the numbers they did.” I’m not sure you can blame that on Obama, exactly — it is pretty hard to get quite that excited about Corzine.

So! Does this mean the White House is safe and sound? Er, no. They’ve got lots to be worried about, starting with that suddenly-unreliable base and going on from there. As much as this election day was not — WAS NOT WAS NOT WAS NOT — about Obama, going forward, they will be. The clear issue on everybody’s mind is the economy, and how the hell we’re all going to move forward. Obama can go on and on about how he’s cleaning up somebody else’s mess, but there’s an expiration date on that line. He is the President, after all. And if people ask themselves, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” and don’t like the answer, well then, he’s got a problem.

But that will be then, and this is now. Last night there was not one election but a whole bunch of them, in different places involving different people with different issues and different intertwined histories. The people who voted cast their vote for or against these different candidates, in the hope that their immediate lives and communities would be made better. They may not like Obama, and they may like his policies, and their patience may be wearing slowly thin. But, last night, it wasn’t about him. 2012 is still years away — plenty of time to blame President Obama, and actually be right.

Related:
Why Creigh Deeds Lost Virginia [Newsweek]
Corzine’s Fall Has Been Festering for a While [CBS News]
What Happened To Bloomberg [Mediaite]
How last night’s election results were bad for Obama [Slate]
Super Tuesday provides ‘unmistakable rebuke of Democrats’ – possible ‘severe near-term consequences’ for Obama agenda – independents flee Dems [Mike Allen's Playbook]
Profile of New Jersey Voters [NYT]
Profile of New York City Voters [NYT]
A Bad Day for the Obama White House A Good Day for the American People [Human Events]

The New York Times website, and its interactive graphic of votes by Council District, revealed that, with a third of precincts in Bloomberg was only up a point.

Talking heads exploded. On NY1, our local city-centric channel, commentators were caught off guard, with one even making the obscenely incorrect leap that perhaps Bloomberg’s opponent (whose name no one really knew) was riding the coattails of a candidate for Comptroller. Others were quick to discuss What This Means™ and how and why it came about.

I’ve run a few campaigns in my day, making me officially an old-timer – but why the numbers were close was obvious. Bloomberg’s strongest areas were reporting 33% of their precincts in; Thompson’s were at 75 and 80%. In other words, there were still a lot more Bloomberg votes still to come in.

Bloomberg, of course, won by five percentage points – less close than it seemed for about an hour last night, but still light years away from the dougle-digit stomping most of the city expected.

Which was the Mayor’s problem. People turned out to vote against him. Those who supported him, having received, on average, 45.6 million pieces of mail, and seeing polls showing the imminent blow-out, didn’t bother. Bloomberg, in a big mistake, didn’t portray the race as being close in the final weeks – perhaps thinking such a prophecy would be self-fulfilling.

The other problem was one of timing – if Bloomberg’s 5% lead had been consistent all night, instead of fluctuating with the vagaries of what came in when, the story would have been about closer-than-expected, not ohmigod-imminent-apocalypse-and-pollster-suicides.

And there was another factor at play: race.

What follows is a contrast between the final Mayoral results (Thompson is blue; Bloomberg, red) and a map of the ethnic breakdown of New York City (as of 1996, but it hasn’t changed an inordinate amount).

As the AP reported, Thompson crushed Bloomberg among Latinos and African-Americans. Bloomberg did well with Whites and Asians (so much for the John Liu for Comptroller coattails theory).

There is much more dissection to be done on this race, by much more qualified people than myself. But here’s a takeaway – in 2005, during Bloomberg’s first re-election, his opponent garnered 503,219 votes. Last night, his opponent got 506,717. Meanwhile, votes for Bloomberg dropped from 678,444 to 557,059 – an 18% drop. Combine that with getting crushed in two core communities, and you end up with last night.

Update: Here’s another telling breakdown.