Democrats Take Majority in House
Senate Remains Too Close to Call
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 8, 2006; 12:12 AM
Democrats captured a majority the House of Representatives tonight, as voters delivered a rebuke to the Bush administration and the governing Republicans amid an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq and a rash of scandals tainting GOP incumbents in several states.
The Senate, however, remained up for grabs tonight, with Democrats winning half of the six Republican seats they needed for a majority there, but several other key races still too close to call.
The victory in the House marked a fundamental power shift in Washington, where Republicans have held the chamber for the past dozen years. It put Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in position to take over next year as the first woman speaker of the House in U.S. history, and it poses a new challenge for President Bush during his final two years in the White House.
With returns trickling in from a number of hotly contested races, Democrats claimed the minimum of 15 victories they needed in Republican-held districts en route to what they hoped would be a larger majority in the House.
In the House, Democrats reached the threshold by knocking off Republicans in three districts in Indiana, two districts in Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and New York, and one each in Connecticut, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio.
Additional Democratic victories were subsequently reported in Arizona.
White House officials privately acknowledged that Democrats appeared almost certain to win significantly more seats than needed to gain control of the House for the first time since 1994 -- a result that would dramatically alter the balance of power in Washington for final two years of the Bush administration.
