^Part of the reason for the loss of independents, had nothing to do with Obama, in fact independents exit polled showed high approval ratings for Obama, but these Dems that ran weren't associated with Obama, Obama didn't do anything to support them, and people aren't blaming Obama for the partisan bickering, in fact the GOP is getting it worse than the Dems, but these were weak candidates with no real ties to the party leader.

@Avinash. Actually Obama was noted for the strong support of one of the people running.

Also part of the reason why the Democrats lost in these was because of Obama, some people expected way more than could possibly be delivered.

One thing I have noticed (which may be nothing) is that Obama regularly scores about 10% lower in "Robo-Polls" than he does in traditional human-operator polls, and I suspect that the constant claims that racists oppose Obama has resulted in people saying they support the president rather than have people judge them as being racists. This distortion in the polling numbers would not be present in "Robo-Polls" because the fear of being considered a racist when dealing with an automated system is unlikely to be present. Being that the average of all "Robo-Polls" was more accurate of the results on Tuesday's elections than the average of human-operator polls, if this bias does exist I'm not certain that Obama would have been able to help these campaigns much; and as Rath pointed out, he was involved and made several appearances for all Democrat candidates.

Now, one consistent thing that has been mentioned across all polls of independents is that Obama polls very highly as a personality (often getting 60%+ of the vote) while he often sees very low support for his policies (often below 40% of the vote) which begs the question whether independents would vote based on his personality or his policies if he was more involved in elections.

^The idea that racism is going to distort Obama's numbers was disproven a year ago.   Many polls, including Robo-polls showed a race that was much closer than it actually turned out to be and the concerns about racism didn't occur, in fact it was Gallup which got the race almost perfect, and they've shown Obama's approval ratings as over 50%

From the exit polls:

57 percent approve of the job Obama is doing as president; 42 percent disapprove. Christie got 88 percent of the vote of those who disapprove and 19 percent of the votes from those who approve of Obama's job.

19 percent said their vote sent a message of support to Obama; 19 percent wanted to send a message of opposition. 60 percent said Obama was not a factor in their vote for New Jersey governor.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/04/exit-poll-nj-independents-boosted-christie/

 Per the exits, 60% in New Jersey and 56% in Virginia said Obama wasn't a factor in their vote. Moreover, Obama's approval in Jersey was 57%, matching the percentage he won in the state in 2008. And Obama's approval in VA was 48%, down from the 53% he won in the state in 2008

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/11/05/2120445.aspx

Not really a sign of him losing support, no here is why the Dems lost:

According to the exit polls, just 10% of the voters in Virginia were under the age of 30, down from 21% last year. What’s more, McDonnell won 18-29 year olds, 54%-44%. Also in Virginia yesterday, African Americans made up 16% of the vote, down from 20% last year. And then there’s this: 51% of yesterday’s voters in Virginia said they voted for McCain, while just 43% said they voted for Obama. Folks, Obama won this state last year by a nearly 53%-46% margin.

So there you go, it was because Dem voters stayed home, a large percentage, and it wasn't because of Obama that they stayed home, no it was because Obama wasn't running and they didn't care about the candidates the Dems fielded

Yes Obama gets higher on his personal approval than on his policies, but that's expected, people are upset about the economy and job losses, his policies won't be seen in a good light until people see their lot improving