Voters seething with discontent took out their anger on congressional Democrats Tuesday, leaving Republicans on the brink of a Senate majority for the first time in eight years and kneecapping President Obama’s ability to pursue his agenda for the rest of his term.
Republicans were projected to net seats in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas and Colorado. Louisiana, another potential pickup, was headed to a December runoff, where the Republican was likely to be favored as well. Combined, those would provide the six seats needed for Republicans to gain control of the Senate.
Races in Iowa, Virginia, Alaska and North Carolina, where Democrats were defending seats, were too close to call at press time.
A chastened White House announced late Tuesday evening that Mr. Obama had invited congressional leaders to the White House on Friday to try to chart a path forward, hoping to find at least some issues where the two parties could cooperate.
Democrats were already engaged in finger-pointing, wondering whether they should have embraced Mr. Obama more or whether they should have ditched their “war on women” attack for a more conciliatory approach toward Republicans in Congress.
Neither party was likely to be able to claim much of an affirmative mandate from the results despite the Republican gains. Indeed, only one-fifth of voters said in exit polls that they trusted government to do the right thing, and they cited the economy as their chief concern six years after they hired Mr. Obama to fix it.
PHOTOS: Republicans control Senate majority; Obama lame duck
The anger, while directed at Washington, chiefly hit Democrats, who were defending more Senate seats and carrying a thin record consisting mainly of support for Mr. Obama’s agenda — plans that have worn poorly with voters.
Citing everything from executive overreach to anger at his health care law, voters ousted Democratic incumbents in Arkansas and Colorado and delivered three long-held Democratic seats in Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota to Republicans. Kentucky voters also re-elected Sen. Mitch McConnell, the ranking Republican in the upper chamber, leaving him poised to become Senate majority leader.
“For too long, this administration has tried to tell the American people what’s good for them and then blame somebody else when their policies didn’t work out. Tonight, Kentucky rejected that approach,” Mr. McConnell said at his victory party.
Across the Capitol, Republicans were projected to hold the House and were looking to extend their majority, potentially coming within reach of their largest contingent in eight decades.
As much as Democrats tried to downplay national implications, voters said they went to the polls intending to send a message to Mr. Obama and his team up and down the ticket.
“Anything you can think of that Obama has done, I’m against,” said Joanne Theon, a 72-year-old retired nurse voting in Northern Virginia. “Not just only Obama, but [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid. I want in the worst way to demote Harry Reid.”
Republicans were poised to accomplish several firsts.
Tim Scott of South Carolina became the first black Republican since Reconstruction to be elected to the Senate from the South. He was appointed to the Senate to fill a vacancy but cruised in his re-election bid, as did seatmate Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Republicans scored a double victory in Oklahoma and held the Senate seats in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Maine — that last being Susan M. Collins, the sole Republican senator running for re-election in a state Mr. Obama carried in 2012.
The GOP victories marked a turnaround from 2012, when Republicans expected to make gains but ended up losing two seats in the Senate and a half-dozen seats in the House, getting trounced in candidate recruitment and in turnout operations.
This time, Republican candidates managed to avoid gaffes such as the abortion comments that sank at least two Senate nominees in 2012. Instead, it was Democrats whose gaffes cost them winnable races.
“There is a recognition in our party that we would have a whole lot more senators today if we had not nominated candidates in ’10 and ’12 who ended up being our own worst enemies,” said Haley Barbour, a former Republican Party chairman and former Mississippi governor. “I don’t think there is some party official that dictates that — I think the average Republican realized that we need to nominate people that can win, that purity is the enemy of victory.”
In a radio interview Tuesday, Mr. Obama said the map was bad for Democrats because of the seats up for re-election. White House press secretary Josh Earnest tried to distance the president from the bad news by saying his agenda wasn’t at stake.
“The vast majority of voters are making a decision on Election Day based on the merits associated with the candidates at the top of the ballot,” Mr. Earnest said.
But most of the Democratic senators had little other than the Obama agenda to take to voters, given the gridlock in Washington in recent years and Mr. Reid’s orchestration of the chamber floor, which meant senators had little choice but to repeatedly vote up or down on the president’s policies.
Voters told the exit polls that Mr. Obama was on their minds, which cost Democrats votes.
Mary Harper emerged from a polling station in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, having broken with her family’s long tradition of voting Democrat to cast her ballot for Republican Shelley Moore Capito for U.S. Senate.
“Since we’ve grown up, we’ve learned that sometimes you go with Republicans,” said Ms. Harper, 62, a registered Democrat.
Some races slipped through Republicans’ hands, though. In New Hampshire, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen won her re-election bid, overcoming a challenge by former Sen. Scott Brown, who moved from Massachusetts to try to win the seat.
Incumbent Democrats survived in Minnesota and Illinois, and Democrats held on to a seat in Michigan, where one of their longtime incumbents is retiring.
In the House, Democrats struggled to defend their own seats, much less find Republican targets to attack. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, speaking just before the first polls closed, called it a “difficult night.”
Elections in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa each swamped the previous record for most outside spending in a Senate race, totaling nearly $200 million between them, according to a tally Monday from the Brennan Center for Justice.
Still to be seen is whether Congress will be any more governable in the next two years than it has been over the past four, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats had a majority in the Senate, and they regularly stalemated on each other’s priorities.
Immigration legislation that cleared the Senate never received a vote in the House, while Republican bills to scale back Mr. Obama’s environmental regulations and boost energy production passed the House but never saw action in the Senate.
Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president in 2012, said the GOP gains in Tuesday’s election were fueled by voters finally experiencing the inability of a big federal government to deliver on Mr. Obama’s promises.
“It’s the incompetence of big government that voters are responding to,” Mr. Ryan said Tuesday night from his election headquarters in Wisconsin.
• David Sherfinski, Jacqueline Klimas and Valerie Richardson contributed to this report.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.