THE GUARDIAN UK 5 NOVEMBER - US MIDTERM ELECTIONS: REPUBLICAN WAVE

The scale of the Democrats’ defeat in the US midterm elections became apparent on Wednesday, with the party losing control of the US Senate by a wider margin than predicted and their Republican opponents on the verge of securing their largest majority in the House of Representatives since the 1940s. President Obama’s party awoke to the political equivalent of a pounding hangover with defeats more numerous and deeper than many Democrats had feared, while Republicans rode a wave of victories that gave them significant momentum going into the 2016 presidential elections. Republicans gained seven Senate seats from Democrats, cementing the GOP’s power base on Capitol Hill. They were poised to take an eighth, Alaska, and if they win a runoff in Louisiana, Republicans would command a 54-vote majority in the Senate. On a night of few positives for Democrats, Republicans also outperformed them in most of the 36 governors’ races, clinching stunning victories in Democratic strongholds including Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois. “This is ugly,” one top Democrat involved in the party’s election strategy told the Guardian in the early hours of Wednesday morning. “It is so much worse than we expected.” The defeat is a significant blow to the president, whose low approval ratings contributed heavily to his party’s electoral drubbing. Obama, an already isolated and unpopular leader, must now see out his remaining two years in the White House with his Republican opponents controlling both branches of Congress. The White House said he would speak at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. The extent of the rout will also be a cause for concern for Hillary Clinton, the heir-apparent for the Democratic presidential nomination, who, along with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, stumped for several of the party’s Senate candidates who lost badly. By the early hours of Wednesday, Republicans were assured of 52 seats in the upper chamber, making Mitch McConnell – who easily saw off a well-funded challenge in his home state of Kentucky – the new Senate majority leader. “The message from voters is clear: they want us to work together,” Harry Reid said in a statement, shortly after his demotion to Democratic minority leader. “I look forward to working with Sen McConnell to get things done for the middle class.” Prominent Republicans were jubilant. The governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, widely seen as a potential candidate for the party in the 2016 presidential elections, said he was delighted with the result and urged Obama to work with the new political reality in Washington. “The president took a beating last night, and the fact is, you’ve got to sit down then with the folks on the other side and say to them, ‘OK, let’s see what we can agree on together’,” he told ABC. Democrats lost seats in West Virginia, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa and, perhaps most surprisingly, North Carolina, where Democrats were confident Senator Kay Hagan would hold on. Republicans, in contrast, held on to all the seats they were defending, including close races in Georgia and Kansas. In Louisiana the race was pushed into a runoff election that will take place in December, where the Republican challenger Bill Cassidy is favoured to unseat Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu. If, as seems likely, Alaska also goes the Republicans’ way, the GOP will have picked up nine seats, a higher tally than even the party’s most optimistic forecasters had expected. In the House, Republicans already enjoyed a comfortable 233-199 majority. That lead has now been extended yet further, with the GOP appearing on course to achieve a net gain of at least 12 seats, which would match or even exceed its largest majority since Harry Truman was president more than 60 years ago. No result will be more unnerving for Democrats with an eye on the 2016 presidential race than Colorado, where the incumbent senator, Mark Udall, was comfortably dispatched by Republican Cory Gardner, a candidate Democrats tried and failed to paint as a rightwing extremist. But in a pattern echoed by Republicans across the country, Gardner disavowed several previous policy stances and mounted a concerted effort to appeal to female and Latino voters. Colorado is increasingly regarded as a bellwether in presidential elections, akin to Ohio; the percentage of voters who supported Obama in the state during the last two presidential elections closely mirrored the nationwide breakdown. Although midterm electorates look very different to presidential years, with lower turnout among young, minority and single-women voters, who tend to lean Democratic, there were worrying signs for the party. There were defeats for Democrats, for example, in two other presidential swing states, Iowa and North Carolina. In Florida, another pivotal state for 2016, Democrat Charlie Crist narrowly failed to dislodge Republican governor Rick Scott. A clutch of other Republican governors in Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan and Kansas also held on to their posts, despite divisive terms in office and fierce opposition that resulted in closely fought races. As they engage in damage limitation, Democrats will in the next few days argue that their defeats in the House and Senate were expected and consistent with historical trends. The party that controls the White House has only gained seats in a midterm election three times since 1862. And in contrast to Tuesday’s poll – where Democrats were defending an unusually large number of Senate seats – the party faces a much more favourable electoral map in 2016 when it will hope to regain seats in the upper chamber. Democrats will also take solace in success in two other states that could be important in 2016: Pennsylvania, where Republican governor, Tom Corbett, was beaten by Democrat Tom Wolf, and New Hampshire, where Democrat Jeanne Shaheen held on to her seat in the face of a challenge from Republican Scott Brown. Yet the scale of Tuesday’s Senate defeat, on a tide of support for Republicans that rippled across House and gubernatorial races, with only a handful of exceptions, will undoubtedly unnerve Democrats. Over the past two decades the party of the incumbent president has lost, on average, four Senate seats during midterms. This year’s Democratic losses in the Senate are likely to be at least double that – a defeat compounded by the Republicans’ huge majority in the House. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/05/us-midterms-defeats-democrats-senate