WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Riding voters' frustration over the current political apparatus in Washington, Republicans gained majority in the U.S. Senate and widened control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections on Tuesday.
Citing exit polls, Fox News and CNN projected that Republicans, who currently hold 45 seats, took the Senate back from the Democrats eight years after losing the 100-member chamber by adding at least seven seats in the midterm elections.
Up to early hours of Wednesday, Republican candidates picked up the seven key states previously held by Democrats in Iowa, Montana, Colorado, North Carolina, Arkansas, South Dakota and West Virginia to gain 52 seats in the Senate.
The victory will give Republicans full control of Congress, as they have fortified on Tuesday their dominance in the House of representatives. The outcome is expected to deal a major blow to President Barack Obama and cast shadows on his last two years in the White House.
Three incumbent Democratic senators -- Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Mark Udall of Colorado -- have lost the seats to their Republican challengers. Joni Ernst netted a crucial seat in Iowa for the GOP and Republican Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Rounds and Steve Daines won the races in West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana respectively.
Louisiana's Senate race will head to a runoff in December as neither incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu or Republican Bill Cassidy was able to gain more than 50 percent of the vote.
Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate Republicans, won a re-election in Kentucky and is poised to become Majority Leader in the Republican Senate.
According to projections, Republicans have maintained their House majority and won more seats than the previously held 233 in the 435-member chamber.
Tuesday's midterm elections came at a time when Obama's support rate is dropping to a low point of about 44 percent. The outcome also revealed a sense of disillusionment among U.S. voters with both parties.
An NBC News national exit poll found that nearly one in five voters have lost all trust in the federal government and a similar number are angry with both Obama and the Republican leaders in Congress.
The poll also found 79 percent of voters disapprove of the job Congress is doing, near the all time high 80 percent disapproval recorded in 1994.
Kathy Goodman, who voted in eastern state of Maryland, told Xinhua that American voters need to "send a message to the government that things are just not good right now."
"I think it's more important than ever for people to speak up and say 'This isn't right'," she said outside a polling station in Montgomery County. "This is definitely not the country I grow up and I am very discouraged with the way things are right now."
Goodman's sentiment was echoed by many voters on site, including Linda Winson, who used the vote to voice her demand for change.
"Things need to be changed. I think it's time for new blood," Winson said.
A bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders will head to the White House on Friday to meet with Obama, Congressional aides and a White House official said late Tuesday.
The meeting is expected to include McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Despite GOP's congressional victory, some analysts still find cooperation between the White House and the Capitol Hill possible.
Obama wants "to secure his legacy by getting some things done" in the next two years, former White House press secretary Jay Carney said on CNN. If the only way to do that is by working with a Republican majority in the Senate, the president will, Carney added.
John Fortier, director of the Democracy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, does not anticipate a fundamental change in the political landscape after Republicans take over the Senate.
"I don't think things are going to be dramatically different," Fortier said, emphasizing that the U.S. already has political division since 2010 -- a president of one party and at least part of Congress of the other party.
Following GOP's victory, Fortier said, Republicans are likely to use the extra power in Congress to make it very difficult for Obama to get nominations through the Senate and hold more hearings to conduct investigation.
Meanwhile, Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, blasted the unprecedentedly huge amount of money candidates are spending in this year's campaign.
Tuesday's elections are projected to be the most expensive midterms in history -- costing almost 4 billion U.S. dollars, according to Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks money in politics.
"While there is a lot at stake in this campaign, it is one of the least inspiring campaigns I've witnessed in many decades of watching American politics," Lichtman said.
He added that money has a "very decisive influence" in the elections and is one of the key reasons why Republicans have the edge in the all-important Senate elections.
"Where are the great ideas? Where are the great principles? They are oddly and strangely absent from America's first 4-billion-dollar campaign," the professor said.
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Republicans win control of U.S. Senate: media
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Republicans have picked up enough seats to gain majority in the U.S. Senate, according to U.S. media projections on Tuesday.
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