Before the tea baggers and Obama haters get too excited over this one congressional election, I consulted my 2012 Almanac of American Politics reference book written by registered Republican and Fox News regular Michael Barone and read about the congressional district that went Republican tonight.
This specific district only leans Democratic, but was never overly Democratic to begin with. True, this district went 2-to-1 for Al Gore in 2000 only because Gore picked Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, to join his ticket and this district is made up of many Orthodox Jews, all of them very conservative. The issue among this bloc of voters was not Obama's economic polices, but Israel, as demonstrated by ex-New York mayor and DINO Ed Koch. However in 2004, John Kerry only beat Duhbya there by a narrower 56%-44% margin and Barack Obama beat John McCain by an even narrower 55%-44% margin, despite the fact that statewide Obama did better carrying New York state than Kerry did four years earlier by carrying the state 63%-36% whereas Kerry only beat Duhbya by 58%-40% in 2004. While the Almanac doesn't call this congressional district conservative, it is very conservative by New York City standards.
In other words, this was never a pro-Obama district to begin with. So nobody should be surprised that this district would be competitive when Anthony Weiner resigned.