Tomorrow is Election Day in certain parts of the country. As usual in odd-numbered years, the handful of major contests to be decided tomorrow night will be seen as a harbinger of what is to come in the 2018 midterm congressional elections. These off-off-year elections always seem to have an outsized effect on the narrative used by the political chattering class, as one party or another once again claims "the wind is at our backs" heading into the midterms. Sometimes these narratives prove to be correct, but other times they are later seen as nothing short of wishful thinking on a national scale. Figuring out the accuracy of the narratives which tomorrow's elections will breed won't be possible for another year, of course, but it won't stop the narratives from spreading in the meantime. Such narratives will certainly have an effect on the midterms, whether correct or not. So even if they prove to be false narratives in the end, they're worth paying attention to for the time being.

The election cycle which takes place one year after the presidential race has two big races that get the most attention: the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. Both of these could produce interesting narratives, but currently most pundits are only paying attention to the Virginia race (which is much closer, therefore much more fun to analyze and predict). This is rather myopic, though, because the New Jersey race could produce an interesting narrative that has some warning signs for both sides of the political divide.

Governor Chris Christie has had a rather remarkable political career in New Jersey, with many parallels to Donald Trump's rise to power. Their political styles are similar, which has always led me to wonder what the 2016 Republican primary race would have looked like if Trump had declined to run. Would Christie's "proto-Trump" style have reaped him the same devoted voter base as Trump managed? Christie's brash-talking rejection of political correctness and embrace of a "counterpunching" political persona (remember all those videos of Christie yelling at constituents in town hall meetings?) didn't really have a chance next to Trump on a debate stage, because Trump took the caricature to such an extreme. If Trump hadn't been standing there, though, who knows how Christie would have done in the GOP primaries? Watching Christie body-slam weak candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio would have been almost as entertaining as watching Trump ridicule them, in other words.

Christie was also plagued by scandal right in the midst of the presidential race, but as Trump successfully showed, if the voters are angry enough and entertained enough by your style, they can overlook all kinds of things. "Bridgegate" was pretty small potatoes when stacked up against all of Trump's campaign-trail antics, after all.

But Christie's presidential bid eventually flamed out, leaving him in a desperate attempt to rebrand himself as the biggest Trump sycophant walking the planet. This, also, didn't really work out so well for Christie, who failed to get a cabinet appointment or even any sort of plum job in the Trump administration. He was tossed the political crumb of being included in an opioid crisis task force, which is a rather large step down from his true ambitions (he reportedly would have been more than happy to be Trump's attorney general).

The narrative of Christie's term as New Jersey governor, however, is a cautionary tale. At one point, Christie had some of the highest public approval ratings of any governor in the country. Donald Trump certainly has never been able to claim that sort of broad-based support. The cautionary note for Republicans in this narrative, though, is the steepness of Christie's eventual fall from grace. From his initial apex of public approval, Christie's numbers plummeted to Earth in one of the most notable dives since Icarus flew too high. Christie's job approval now polls regularly below 20 percent, with his disapproval numbers at times topping 80 percent. He went from "most popular governor in the country" to "least popular governor in the entire history of polling in New Jersey" in only a few short years.

This is the big reason why tomorrow's race isn't all that close. The Democratic candidate is going to skate to an easy victory. New Jersey is a pretty blue state in presidential elections, so this isn't really all that surprising. Rampant corruption among Garden State Democratic politicians paved the way for Christie's initial win, but Christie's massive unpopularity is now paving the way for Democrats to take back the governor's mansion. So the political pendulum swings, in other words. But there's also a cautionary note for Democrats in this narrative, because equating Christie's rise and fall with the hoped-for fall of Donald Trump ignores one basic fact: Christie was overwhelmingly re-elected. So anyone making too much of the narrative of "Christie equals Trump" would have to prepare themselves for Trump's second term, where his poll numbers would tank. This only goes to show the limited usefulness of such narratives in general. Christie's record isn't the same as Trump's -- Christie reached approval polling highs that Trump can only dream about, after all, so drawing parallels is probably not too wise in this particular case. Caveat emptor, in other words (or possibly cave canem?).

Latin snarkiness aside, this brings us to the Virginia election, which is going to be the most over-analyzed of the 2017 cycle. It's pretty easy to draw the parallels in this contest to the 2016 presidential election, which is why so many are so interested in the outcome. On the Democratic side, the Democratic establishment candidate beat out a progressive upstart (endorsed by Bernie Sanders) in the primary. Ralph Northam is seen by many as an uninspiring candidate who is running a pretty milquetoast campaign. Does any of this sound familiar?

On the other side, a Republican establishment candidate narrowly defeated a full-on Trumpian rabble-rouser, and then he immediately reinvented himself as his own Trump-style rage-induced candidate. Ed Gillespie was always a Republican insider, an operative behind the scenes who loved the wonkery of politics. It is becoming rather traditional for such party insiders to move to Virginia and become politicians themselves rather than continuing as mere party operatives. The outgoing governor, after all, is Terry McAuliffe, the ultimate insider from the Clinton crowd. He was previously chair of the Democratic National Committee and was prominent in both Bill and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns. Gillespie is trying to walk a path already pioneered by Democrats, in other words.

But just being a party wonk isn't nearly exciting enough, these days. Gillespie has adopted Trumpian belligerence and embraced the demagogic Steve Bannon campaign style that got Trump elected. The ad wars have been brutal, with Gillespie scapegoating immigrants and championing the cause of Civil War monuments of Southern heroes. Which has led to the question so many are asking: will a Trumpian campaign work for someone not named Donald J. Trump?

If Northam wins tomorrow night, the narrative will instantly become one of Democratic resistance to Trump-style politics winning the day. Virginia will be seen as a pickup for the Democrats (which is actually inaccurate, since McAuliffe is a Democrat). With the expected win in New Jersey, though, holding on to Virginia will result in an overall improvement for Democrats in governors' offices nationwide. Democrats will celebrate such an outcome and declare that they've got the wind at their back heading into the 2018 midterms. They will gleefully warn Republicans that Trump-style campaigns don't always work, in an effort to make Republican candidates think twice about using such tactics. This is how the narrative can change the dynamics of the race, whether it proves to be accurate or not after the votes are counted next year.

If Gillespie wins, however, the narrative will be one of continuing triumph for Trump followers. On the Democratic side, this will lead to despondency and recriminations over running bland establishmentarian candidates rather than full-throated economic populists. It'll be a re-run of the fallout from the Jon Ossoff defeat in Georgia, but on a much larger scale. This schism has already erupted, days before the election. Progressive groups have pointedly "unendorsed" Northam, and even called him a "racist." The Democratic "what went wrong in Virginia" narrative has already begun, in other words. On the other side, Republican candidates across the country may become emboldened to fully embrace Trump tactics and Steve Bannon-style scapegoating. Which would mean a 2018 midterm cycle that could be more brutal than has been seen in quite some time.

Local elections (even statewide ones) rarely if ever accurately predict the mood of the national electorate at large. Rightly or wrongly, however, they do give rise to political narratives that are hard (if not impossible) to ignore, for any politician. Which is why so much attention will be paid to the Virginia race's outcome. If Gillespie loses, then Democrats will begin (cautiously) predicting a "wave" election in 2018. This may intimidate more Republicans in Congress to decide to hang up their spurs -- a trend which has already begun. Why go out in an electoral defeat when you can quit on your own terms, after all? If Northam loses, however, Democrats may spend an inordinate amount of time and energy fighting amongst themselves. As the release of Donna Brazile's book proves, there are still some awfully raw feelings between Bernie Sanders supporters and Hillary Clinton's backers. Party unity will become a lot harder to achieve, heading into midterm election season.

No matter the outcome, the narrative which emerges immediately afterwards (soon to become ossified as inside-the-Beltway "conventional wisdom") is going to be important to the 2018 midterm cycle. One side or the other is going to pick the narrative up and attempt to run with it as far as they can. Of course, as I said at the beginning, the narrative might prove to be wrong. A Democratic sweep tomorrow does not in any way guarantee a Democratic wave election in 2018. A Republican victory in Virginia, conversely, in no way means that such a Democratic wave election won't appear next November. Either way, though, the narrative will impact the way politicians on both sides of the aisle see 2018, and they'll likely adjust their strategies and tactics accordingly. So even if the narrative proves to be illusory, it will indeed have a major impact on next year's politics.

-- Chris Weigant

Cross-posted at The Huffington Post

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant