The Republicans have won control of the Senate in the US mid-term elections, increasing their power in the final two years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The party won in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia.
And it is expected to post more gains as votes are counted in other states.
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, poised to lead the chamber, said the result was a vote against “a government that people can no longer trust”.
In the mid-terms, so-called because they fell half way into Mr Obama’s second four-year term in office, about one-third of the Senate, the entire House of Representatives, 36 of 50 state governors, and countless state and local offices were up for election.
Throughout the campaign, Republicans focused on voter dissatisfaction with Mr Obama, a Democrat, describing the vote as a referendum on his presidency.
As the first results came in late on Tuesday, it became clear they had made convincing gains in the chamber.
With the votes still being counted in many states, the Republican Party easily won the six seats it needed to win control of the Senate.
The party now controls 52 seats, and is tipped to win more.
As well as taking the Senate, the Republicans are projected to increase their majority in the House of Representatives to levels not seen since before World War Two.
They also made gains among the 36 governorships up for re-election.
When the new Congress is sworn in in January, it will mark the first time the Republicans have held both chambers since 2006.
They will now have the power to complicate, if not block completely, Mr Obama’s agenda in the last two years of his tenure in the White House.
Control of the Senate will also enable the Republicans to stymie his ability to name new federal judges, cabinet members and senior government officials.
Barack Obama’s unpopularity in the run-up to these mid-term elections is hard to exaggerate. One of the things that is lost in the big picture of the night is some of the sidebar poll findings – the American people are fed up with all their politicians. It’s not just the occupant of the White House, though as Harry Truman most famously noted, the buck stops with the president.
Mitch McConnell will be conscious of that, and will know that in two years’ time, when it is not just the Senate but the presidency in play, the American people could be venting their spleen on him. Be fearful of the blame game.
That leaves the Kentucky senator with some important tactical decisions to make.
In addition to seats the party won from the Democrats, the Republicans retained seats in at least a dozen other states.
In Louisiana, neither of the top two candidates gained 50% of the vote, forcing a run-off election in early December.
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29910542
