Most American elections aren’t particularly competitive. So an off-year election cycle with only a few important offices at stake doesn’t have any business being interesting.

But the 2009 political season has been surprisingly entertaining. True, the Virginia governor’s race looks increasingly like a Republican cakewalk. But tomorrow’s other two noteworthy elections, in New Jersey and far upstate New York, have become fascinating free-for-alls.

And in both cases, a third-party candidate provided the spark.

If it weren’t for Chris Daggett, a former E.P.A. administrator turned independent candidate for governor, the race for the Garden Statehouse would have been a dull, grinding contest between an unpopular incumbent, Jon Corzine, and a cautious challenger, Chris Christie, who has spent his campaign promising not to be Jon Corzine and not much else.

If it weren’t for Doug Hoffmann, a Lake Placid accountant running on the Conservative Party line, the battle to represent New York’s 23rd Congressional District would have been a Tweedle-Dee-Tweedle-Dum affair, featuring a Republican, Dede Scozzafava, who’s arguably more liberal than her Democratic opponent, Bill Owens.