WASHINGTON: The White House on Wednesday put a brave face on the defeat of President Barack Obama’s allies in the state elections, saying that those elections were fought on local issues.

On Tuesday, Republican candidates won back the office of governor from the Democrats in two key states of Virginia and New Jersey. This happened exactly a year after Mr Obama was elected US President with comfortable wins in both states.

In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie pulled off an upset to defeat the incumbent Jon Corzine, by a margin of 55-44 per cent, according to preliminary results.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg won a third term in office, defeating his Democratic rival Bill Thompson.

Virginians returned to the Republican Party in a big way, electing Bob McDonnell as governor plus a Republican lieutenant governor and a Republican attorney general for only the second time. Mr McDonnell is the first Republican governor in 12 years.

Although Mr Obama, a Democrat, invested himself and his prestige – and that of his vice-president — in these two states, it did not help.

President Obama did five events for Mr Corzine, talking of him as a partner in the Senate and in the White House but it did not impress New Jersey voters.

However, Mr Obama’s manoeuvre to remove unbeaten Republican Congressman John McHugh from New York’s 23d District by naming him secretary of the army worked. A Democrat — Bill Owens — won that seat by beating the Conservative Party’s Doug Hoffman. This increases the overwhelming Democratic majority in the House by one for at least a year. And Democrats also won a special election to a Northern California congressional seat. California Lt-Gov John Garamendi easily defeated Republican David Harmer.

The results are particularly significant because of the congressional elections due next year. Republicans, who lost control of Congress in 2006 and the White House last year, hope to use Tuesday’s victory to regain Congress.

The current make-up of the US Senate is 58 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and two Independents.

The US House of Representatives has 256 Democrats, 178 Republicans and one vacancy. All members of the House will face re-election in 2010.

One-third of the 100 US Senate seats are up for election every two years. The 2010 election will be held November 2, with at least 36 of the 100 seats in the Senate being contested.

Republican leaders quickly sought to cast their victories in New Jersey and Virginia as a sign of trouble for President Obama and said this was the beginning of a new resurgence for their party.

The White House rejected their argument, saying that the results were not about the president. The results showed that the voters were ‘increasingly fed up with Mr Obama’s policies,’ said the Republican Party’s chairman Michael Steele. ‘The Republican renaissance has begun and it has begun in earnest.’

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, however, denied that President Obama failed his first popularity test since his election last year.

‘People went to the polls and voted on local issues not to either register support for or opposition to the president,’ he said.