It’s Friday, which means it’s time to separate the chumps from the champs in Mediaite’s Winners and Losers, our scorecard of who rocked and who flopped in the headines. This week, a special off-year election edition, featuring Doug Hoffman, Mike Bloomberg, and more:

The Conservative candidate in that hotly-contested Upstate New York special congressional election, Doug Hoffman, lost to the Democratic candidate Bill Owens last night.

What does it mean? Well since Hoffman is the first national candidate to come out of the 9/12 Project/Tea Party movement, it’s not insignificant.

Election Day is upon us. But in the age of media overload, how do you decide how to follow it? Fortunately, Mediaite has put together a web-focused list of blogs, Twitter feeds, publications, and cable sources to guide you through the day:

Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity really want Doug Hoffman to win that special congressional election in Upstate New York’s 23rd district. It’s not just because he’s a 3rd party “Conservative” candidate in a race that saw the shunned, moderate Republican candidate drop out. It’s because this race is a referendum on town halls, on tea partying, on the 9/12 Project.

The NY-23 special election continues to get stranger. Now that Republican Dede Scozzafava has dropped out of the race and endorsed her Democratic opponent, Bill Owens, this is one for the history books. But what will they record? Regardless of who wins, pundits on both sides of the aisle are already writing the rough drafts.

Former Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, appearing on Meet the Press this morning, set the table for what will likely be the conversation of the week: The meaning of the “Palin Effect” in the NY-23 congressional race. Plouffe managed to crystallize the Democratic Party’s hopes going forward, saying “Sarah Palin is playing Pied Piper to the Republicans,” referencing Palin’s endorsement of 3rd party candidate Doug Hoffman. Is Palin leading Republicans off an electoral cliff, or into a glorious era of ideological purity?

We’ve written about the hotly contested Congressional race in New York’s 23rd district, in which many high-profile Republicans are endorsing the third party candidate over the Republican choice.

The most high-profile Republican endorsing the GOP choice, Dede Scozzafava, is Newt Gingrich, and he defended his decision last night.

When Sarah Palin endorsed Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman over GOP moderate Dede Scozzafava, it was a fair question to ask: “why?” Mainstream media accounts that only touch on Scozzafava’s political beliefs are just telling part of the story.