As is usually the case, the party out of the White House made gains in an off-year election. And as usual, local issues and personalities dominated. Still, some big victories in big jobs, and wins in such smaller places as Connecticut cities and elsewhere, including Woonsocket, made Tuesday night generally a happy one for Republicans, including, we’d guess, the defeat of a referendum approving gay marriage in Maine.

The two most notable races, of course, were the landslide victory of former state Atty. Gen. Robert McConnell over state Sen. Creigh Deeds in the Virginia race for governor and the more narrow victory of former U.S. Atty. Chris Christie, a moderate Republican, over incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey.

The outcome of the first hadn’t been much in doubt. Mr. Deeds was a mediocre campaigner, to say the least. And he dared to mention that taxes might have to be raised to pay for transportation infrastructure (as they probably will be . . . ). The photogenic Mr. McConnell, for his part, was an increasingly strong campaigner. Despite some right-wing rhetoric in the past, he evoked high competence and successfully positioned himself as something of a centrist in the general-election campaign.

In the Garden State, Mr. Christie’s victory can be attributed to, among other things, that Mr. Corzine is a generally unattractive campaigner, that he was saddled by his background as former CEO of the widely hated Goldman Sachs investment firm, and that New Jerseyites are angry about surging property taxes (in part caused by the surfeit of taxing jurisdictions). Also important was that last summer New Jersey, famous for its public corruption, was the scene of an explosion of arrests of public officials. That reminded the voters of the affable-seeming Mr. Christie’s previous fine work in sending crooked politicians to jail.

Then there was the interesting phenomenon of the public lashing out against people who try to buy elections. Mr. Corzine, with his Goldman Sachs millions, far outspent Mr. Christie (who depended in large part on public funds for his campaign). And in New York City, that the victory of Michael Bloomberg (who ran as an Independent but with GOP support) over Democrat William Thompson was far narrower than expected can be attributed in part (paradoxically?) to how much money he spent to win. There is a growing populist resentment in the land about the trend toward rich people seeming to buy elections.

In upstate New York, this showed itself, a bit, in the victory in a traditionally very Republican congressional district of Democrat Bill Owens (with the support of the GOP candidate, who recently dropped out of the race) over Doug Hoffman, a very right-wing Republican (running on the Conservative Party line) who was backed by truckloads of money from the Club for Growth, a big-business-backed Washington lobbying group. A lot of voters found this offensive, though the local split in the Republican Party was the biggest factor in the outcome.

Who knows what this will mean for next year’s congressional elections? A week is an eternity in politics, and few things are as fickle as public sentiment. But the degree to which the economy improves will be the central factor.