When new members are sworn in next year, “only half of the Senators who voted to pass the Affordable Care Act will still be in office.” Bloomberg,
Here’s a by-the-numbers look at some of the milestones and notable characteristics of the 2014 Senate elections:
30: With Landrieu’s loss, exactly half of the 60 senators who voted for Obama’s health-care overhaul on Christmas Eve 2009 will not be in the Senate in January. Nineteen of them retired or resigned, eight were defeated for re-election, and three died in office. In her concession speech Saturday night, Landrieu said that she and others “fought a good fight, and it’s not over yet, for health care” and that she was “glad we fought for it.” She didn’t specifically mention Obamacare.
9: That’s the net seat gain that Republicans made in the Senate, the biggest by either party since Republicans picked up a dozen seats in 1980 with the help of Ronald Reagan’s landslide election as president. Republicans unseated Democratic incumbents in five states—Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, and North Carolina—and also picked up the seats of retiring Democratic incumbents in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia. Colorado and Iowa voted to re-elect President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, though the other seven states backed Republican challenger Mitt Romney. A tough map for Democrats was made tougher by Obama’s mediocre job approval rating.
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