Looking at election data from this week’s statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia, it seems that the loyalty of young voters may only have been to one man — Barack Obama — not a party or an ideology, presenting a real opportunity for the GOP despite calls of extinction after 2008.

President Barack Obama will wake up tomorrow, the one-year anniversary of his historic election, with bad news. Voters sent a strong message by (1) rejecting his political allies in Virginia, the swing state that helped deliver him the White House. This is the home state of Tim Kaine, who is the Democratic National Committee chairman and outgoing governor, and (2) the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey.

However, the Democrats did get a coup in one area: New York’s 23rd Congressional District, a Republican-leaning district (R+1, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index). Bill Owens (Democratic Party candidate) beat Doug Hoffman (Conservative Party candidate), and so the Democrats picked up a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. As I’ve argued here before, it isn’t strategically wise for movement conservatives to be knocking moderate Republican candidates (as was done to Dede Scozzafava) out of races.

After all, New York is not Alabama.