Elections

After Tuesday, the U.S. Senate map looks a lot like the Electoral College

By Greg Hadley

ghadley@mcclatchy.com

November 09, 2016 06:08 PM

While this historic election didn't bring the U.S. its first female president, there were some other firsts. Explore the results, reaction and history of Election Day 2016.

Talk about how divided the American electorate is has abounded in the past few months, and the results of Tuesday’s election continue to prove that.

On Wednesday evening, incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte conceded her Senate race in New Hampshire to Gov. Maggie Hassan. That means that of the 34 states where Senate seats were open, Democrats’ victories matched up exactly with where the party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, won electoral votes, and vice versa for the Republicans and Donald Trump.

Democrats claimed wins in New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maryland, Illinois, Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii. The other states Clinton won, New Mexico, Minnesota, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Maine, are overwhelmingly Democratic in the Senate already, with just one Republican, Maine’s Susan Collins.

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On the Republican side, Senate candidates rode the wave of Trump to wins in swing states such as Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and Arizona.

The one exception in all of this is Louisiana, which has a unique electoral system without primaries. The top two vote-getters in Tuesday’s election will proceed to a run-off in December if no one wins 50 percent or more. That means Republican John Kennedy and Democrat Foster Campbell will face off in a month, with Kennedy earning the plurality of votes Tuesday with 25 percent.

Eleven states will have senators from different parties in the coming Congress. At the moment, Republicans will have 51 seats in the Senate, as well as the vote of vice president-elect Mike Pence and the Louisiana seat, which most pundits expect them to win. Democrats have 46 seats as well as two independents who caucus with the party.