Leading up to this fall's election, I witnessed a lot of apparent discontent with the establishment.

We received an enormous number of letters to the editor, and although some incumbents and ballot issues saw a lot of support, there was much clamoring for changes in the way things are done. In the comments on our Web site, the clamoring got even louder.

A lot of it was driven by the economy and this recent narrative that everybody in the government is spending way too much money.

You'd think from the way some folks told it that this election would mark a revolution against incumbents and issues like tax levies.

But Election Day painted a much different picture.

Local library levies all passed, as did three out of five school levies, including in beleaguered South-Western. A countywide emergency sirens levy in Delaware County failed along with the other two school levies.

More importantly, for all the hubbub about spending and accountability, local incumbents received widespread support in this election, just like they always do.

Of the 22 cities and villages our papers cover, 15 saw all the incumbents who sought re-election retain their seats, with an additional small village, Riverlea, being an odd case in which no incumbents sought re-election. Four more cities -- Bexley, Grove City, Pickerington and Reynoldsburg -- and one more village, Groveport, lost only one incumbent apiece.

In fact, of those 22, only one entity saw the removal of more than one member: Whitehall, in which incumbent Leslie LaCorte lost to challenger Van Gregg and sitting Councilwoman Jackie Thompson was recalled by voters.

The story is similar across the 18 school districts our papers cover. Eleven of them kept around all the incumbents who sought re-election, with a 12th, New Albany-Plain Local, having no incumbents on the ballot.

Big Walnut, Gahanna, Groveport-Madison and South-Western shed one member apiece. Only in Canal Winchester and Reynoldsburg did multiple incumbents lose out -- Stan Smith and Chuck Miller in Canal Winchester, and Cheryl Max and Jim Slonaker in Reynoldsburg.

I acknowledge there are areas in which candidates seen as at least somewhat anti-establishment managed to get elected to public bodies to which some incumbents didn't seek re-election; I just don't have the space to list them all.

But the overwhelming success of the status quo at the local level suggests that maybe the majority of residents aren't quite as upset at the government in general as some of their louder compatriots might have us believe.

It helps that local candidates often connect better with voters than do state or national candidates. But the simple fact is that convincing voters to vote against a person is a lot tougher than convincing them to vote against a group.

And when it's re-election time -- be it for township fiscal officer or for president of the United States -- it's people, not groups, on the ballot.

Those who would use generalizations to foresee the doom of any elected official or ballot issue would do well to remember that first.