In a new roundup of the morning's front pages you'll be glad to hear that our measured press corps refuses to read too much into last night as a ridiculous referendum on Obama so soon into his presidency. Kidding!

Most of the front pages focus on the fact that New Jersey and Virginia statehouses went Republican while a congressional district in upstate NY went Democrat for the first time in 100 years despite (or perhaps because of) the interference of Sarah Palin. The New York press go big on the news that Bloomberg didn't win by as much as you would have thought considering he spent a bajillion dollars and handed out dubloons from his sedan chair. The story that Warren Buffett decided to fulfill magnate cliches and invest in trains makes a splash too. And apparently there's also some baseball game later.

The New York Times: above the fold it's all politics - an election round-up and two stories about Bloomberg's narrow margin of victory dominate. Below the fold it's fun time! Iraqis are using a useless stick to try and find bombs! Police are using dogs for sniff-test lineups!

The Washington Post: here it's all politics, all the time (except for a cursory tale about a high-school football star benched for chest-bumping). They go big with the local story; that the GOP has reclaimed Virginia. They hit Obama twice - once with a story saying Democrats aren't doing the hard cost-cutting work on the health bill and another saying it's not 2008 any more and that he should watch out. They preface the latter with the caveat that you can't tell anything from off-year elections. Then proceed to conjecture anyway.

The LA Times: perhaps understandably for a newspaper thousands of miles away from most of the elections last night, devotes one corner to the GOP 'comeback' (my inverted commas), and gives the main splash to a story about the machinations over the choice of the new LA police chief. Warren Buffett's $34bn purchase of Burlington Northern Railroad is seen as a harbinger of recovery, and there's also a piece on peaceful protest in Palestine.

The New York Post: the Post never misses an opportunity to unleash Photoshop for a sporting event. And today is no different. Inside they cover the big three political stories - Corzine's loss in Jersey, Upstate going Democrat and Bloomberg's narrow win.

The Daily News: wins the stating-the-obvious award in pointing out that it is Bloomberg's last chance to deliver as mayor. As he's unlikely to roll back term limits again and run a fourth time, this seems somewhat obvious. It does ask the intriguing question, also posed elsewhere, of what might have happened if the Democratic machine had thrown its weight behind their official candidate, Bill Thompson.

The Washington Times: It's always fun, when politics is big news, to see what the right-wing nutjobs have to say. The other Times says independents "fled" back into the arms of Republicans, saying it never meant anything and begging their forgiveness. Meanwhile those grass-roots (as in stoked by the conservative media) tea-partiers say they're now ready for 2010 after agitating for the upstate New York congressional race. That their guy lost. Also, environmental regulation is bad for business and the EPA is very naughty for pursuing unorthodox means to ensure it.

Aripaev: I do not speak Estonian and have no idea what this says. But this Talinn daily is laid out by legendary newspaper designer Jacek Utko, and highlights the fact that for some reason US broadsheets all have an aesthetic straight out of the 1890s. Utko thinks that good design can save newspapers. It's worth a try!