And thus returns a perennial puzzle in American politics: what national lessons can be drawn from the Republicans' success in local races? Last year, when the Republicans took back the Senate, won a majority of the seats in state legislatures and seized several governorships, conservatives said the evenly-balanced "50:50 nation" had tipped in their favour. Nonsense, replied Democrats: it was all down to temporary aberrations (such as people rallying around the president's party after September 11th) and local peculiarities (such as a row about the Confederate flag that doomed Georgia's Democratic governor, Roy Barnes). Last month, when Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up the governorship of California, even Republicans seemed prepared to concede that this was primarily a local affair. On November 4th, their party won two more governorships in spectacular style. In Mississippi, Haley Barbour beat the Democrat incumbent, Ronnie Musgrove, by eight percentage points. In Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher, a Republican congressman, walloped Ben Chandler, the Democratic attorney-general and grandson of a former governor, by ten points.
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