Actually, it's less than status quo.
In 2001, NJ and VA were won with a wider margin in an election year where W Bush was at his most popular...2 months after 9/11.
This year, as Bush's popularity is supposedly at its lowest, those 2 governorships were won with a lesser margin.
So when Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander, Liddy Dole, and John Cornyn won their senate seats in 2002, they were status quo results, not wins, because they were replacing Republicans? I'm not buying that argument at all. What it says is that there's no way to read these elections as ever being negative for Republicans.