Voters across the United States went to the polls on Tuesday in elections that could gauge the depth of President George W. Bush's political woes and affect next year's critical congressional elections.
The governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey gathered the most interest, but dozens of cities picked mayors and seven states voted on ballot issues, including California where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has bet his sinking political capital on passing four initiatives.
With control of both chambers of the US Congress and 36 governorships at stake in 2006, both parties will scour Tuesday's off-year election results for clues to next year's political climate and the long-term effect of Bush's plummeting approval ratings, now the lowest of his presidency.
Bush has done little campaigning this year but on Monday he stopped in Virginia on his way back from Latin America to rally with the Republican candidate for governor, former state Attorney General Jerry Kilgore.
"We're not taking anything for granted," Bush said in 11th-hour appearance in Richmond with Kilgore, who late last month avoided meeting up with Bush.
Kilgore's Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine, campaigned with highly popular Gov. Mark Warner, who cannot succeed himself. Warner, too, had a stake in Tuesday's election since a Kaine loss could dim the governor's hopes for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. The Virginia race, in a normally Republican state, was considered a dead heat.
In Democratic-leaning New Jersey, Democratic Sen. Jon Corzine held a slight lead in the latest polls over Republican businessman Doug Forrester in what turned out to be a very expensive and nasty campaign.
Possibly no one had more at stake than Schwarzenegger, the once immensely popular governor of the nation's largest state who faces re-election next year. The former actor has campaigned heavily for the four ballot initiatives that polls show to be losing.