(Washington) Quiet down, Rush and Newt. Zip your lips, Nancy and Harry. Centrist politics trumped ideological extremes.

In the nation’s two marquee primary elections this year, Democrats in Virginia and Republicans in New Jersey selected moderate candidates for governor, rejecting people whose views were further left or right.

Certainly, it’s hard to draw conclusions about the country’s political mindset from just two races in just two states – primaries in which few voters participated, at that. But the results of Virginia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday and New Jersey’s GOP primary last week provide the only 2009 window into where voters in both parties may stand in Democrat Barack Obama’s first year as president and as the out-of-power Republican Party seeks to rebound.

The results are all the more noteworthy because primaries usually attract only the most motivated voters, typically people at the extreme ends of the political spectrum.

But in these cases, voters seemed to chose nominees who may give their parties the best chance of winning in November given each state’s political traditions. Moderate Creigh Deeds won the Democratic nomination in Virginia, which until recently has tilted to the right nationally, and moderate Republican Christopher Christie won the GOP nod in New Jersey, historically a left-leaning state.

Ideologically, each appears positioned to attract independents and moderates from the opposite party in the fall.

The races are shaping up to be bloody; Democrats control both states but Republicans sense opportunity.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine by law must leave office after one term. The three-way Democratic primary fight to succeed him was ugly – and expensive. Conversely, Republican Bob McDonnell, a conservative who is Virginia’s attorney general, had a clear path to the GOP nomination – and has a hefty bank account.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is seeking re-election and has the White House’s backing. But Republicans are buoyed by the fact that his support has tanked along with the state’s economy. Already, a series of polls has shown Corzine trailing Christie, a centrist former federal prosecutor.

“It sounds pretty consistent with the trends that we’ve been observing nationally – that the moderates have more sway these days than they did in the early part of the decade,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

He added: “Primaries tend to draw more of the party regulars who tend to be more ideological, either left or right. But these results would suggest that even the true-blue Democrats and true-red Republicans have more moderate impulses these days. Voters also are very pragmatic in times of trouble, and these results may reflect that as well.”

Kohut’s nonpartisan organization recently released a survey that found that the country is in the midst of an era of centrism and has experienced such a boost in independent voters that they now make up the largest proportion of the electorate in 70 years. The survey also found no evidence that the country has become more ideologically liberal or conservative, despite sweeping Democratic victories at all levels of government last fall and shrinking GOP ranks.

Still, the ideological extremes in both major political parties have been vocal.

Obama, who had a liberal Senate voting record but is trying to govern from the center as president, is facing resistance from his party’s left wing. At times, he has been at odds with the Democratic-run Congress spearheaded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Republicans lack a standard-bearer since George W. Bush left office. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a hero of the right wing, have emerged as the loudest voices in a debate over whether the GOP should adhere strictly to its conservative roots or broaden itself to attract followers from across the political spectrum.

In Virginia, Deeds, a state senator from a rural part of the Southern state, is moderate, if not conservative, on guns, gay marriage and the death penalty. He promised primary voters that he would govern much like centrist Democratic governors Kaine and former Gov. Mark Warner. In the end, he thumped two opponents who ran to the left of him.

They were a well-funded Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and longtime Clinton confidant who modeled his campaign after Obama’s, and Brian Moran, a former state House Democratic Caucus leader who promoted liberal positions like reversing the state’s same-sex marriage ban.

Deeds is trying to become leader of a state that until recent years was long considered a Republican bastion. Last fall, Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia in a presidential race since 1964. And Virginia is now represented in the Senate by two Democrats, albeit moderates, Warner and Jim Webb.

In New Jersey, Christie had the backing of much of the GOP establishment and raised the maximum campaign cash allowed for the primary. He entered the race with nonpartisan rhetoric that sounded much like Obama. After a spirited contest, Christie easily dispatched Steve Lonegan, an ultraconservative one-time small-town mayor who pushed him to the right throughout the campaign, calling for massive state government layoffs, a ban on abortion and no business taxes. Less of a threat to Christie was conservative assemblyman Rick Merkt.

Christie is more moderate than them, though he has staked out conservative positions on school vouchers, abortion restrictions and regulatory issues. He also was nudged to the right on economic issues through the campaign, but is likely to tack back to the center as he tries to prevail in a state that has more registered Democrats than Republicans.

For years, moderate Republicans ruled in New Jersey. But, like in much of the Northeast, the GOP has sustained heavy losses in recent years, and Republicans see the New Jersey’s governors race – Christie’s candidacy coupled with Corzine’s unpopularity – as a chance to reverse that trend.