Even optimistic Republican operatives didn’t anticipate this.
The GOP seized control of the Senate, won House seats no one saw coming and expanded its footprint in governors’ mansions.
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Here are our takeaways from the night:
The Republican takeover of the South is finally complete.
Arkansas was a last Democratic stronghold in the South. Native son Bill Clinton went several times for days at a time to try holding the governorship and a Senate seat. Democrats hoped the enduring popularity of Sen. Mark Pryor’s father, David, a former governor and senator, would generate goodwill and insulate him from anti-Barack Obama sentiment.
(PHOTOS: Election Day 2014)
Not only did Republican Tom Cotton trounce Pryor by 16 points, but the outgoing Democratic governor, Mike Beebe, will be replaced by former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a member of the House team that led impeachment proceedings against Clinton in 1998. National Democrats believed that the moderate former mayor of North Little Rock, Patrick Henry Hays, would pick up an open House seat — but he fell to a banker named French Hill.
“Battleground Texas,” the much ballyhooed effort to turn the state blue, was a bust. Democratic star recruit Wendy Davis was crushed by 21 points, and even lost among female voters.
Hundreds of stories were written about how Georgia is trending purple because of a growing minority population, and nonprofit executive Michelle Nunn was a top Democratic recruit. But Republican David Perdue easily topped the 50 percent threshold to win outright. So did Gov. Nathan Deal, who beat Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason by 8 points.
Democrats failed at distancing themselves from the president.
Democrats knew Barack Obama was unpopular, and he avoided campaigning anywhere but solidly blue states. It didn’t work.
(Also on POLITICO: Tom Cotton defeats Mark Pryor in Arkansas)
More than 300,000 advertisements aired across 28 Senate races linking the Democrat with Obama, according to Kantar Media. The races where he came up most often were Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina.
In Kentucky, Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes was mocked for refusing to say whether she had voted for Obama — even though she was a delegate at her party’s national convention. McConnell wound up winning by just under 16 points — a much bigger margin than even GOP internal polls showed.
Everywhere else, incumbent Democrats tried to localize the races. In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan tried to make her race about larger class sizes and education spending cuts by the GOP state Legislature. That frame didn’t stick.
(Senate results by state)
The national exit polling put Obama’s overall approval rating at 41 percent. But the bigger story is that voters are really down about the status quo: two-thirds said the country is on the wrong track, just 22 percent believe their children will be better off than them and 72 percent worry about a terrorist attack on American soil.
Voters crave authenticity and hate phonies.
Scott Brown was one of the few dark spots for Senate Republicans on Tuesday, losing his challenge to New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen by about 4 points — even though Obama’s popularity in the state is in the 30s.
The fact that Brown just became a New Hampshire resident last December was never a centerpiece of the campaign, but it was always the undertone of Democratic ads. And it helped explain why Brown was viewed more unfavorably than favorably.
(Also on POLITICO: Jeanne Shaheen vanquishes Scott Brown in New Hampshire)
Network exit polls asked voters whether they thought Brown had lived in the state long enough to effectively represent it. Among the 45 percent who said yes, Brown won 93 percent. Among the 52 percent who said no, Brown won just 10 percent.
Likewise, in Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott has never been popular but he spent tens of millions successfully hitting Charlie Crist as a political opportunist. Many of his ads showed Crist flip-flopping: calling for Clinton to resign in the 1990s then calling him one of the greatest Americans to ever live.
And in New York, Sean Eldridge — the husband of Facebook early employee Chris Hughes — lost by 30 points. Eldridge, a Canadian native who has worn his political ambitions on his sleeve, bought a house in the district so that he could challenge Republican Chris Gibson.
Republican governors thrived in blue states.
Only one of the nine GOP governors up for reelection in states Obama carried twice went down: Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett, which has been expected for years.
(Also on POLITICO: Tom Wolf ousts Gov. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania)
Against the odds, not only did Maine Gov. Paul LePage survive despite being somewhat polarizing in a blue state, he got 10 percent more of the vote than he did four years ago during the 2010 GOP wave.
Despite spirited, well-funded challenges, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder both won with a couple points to spare.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich won reelection by 31 points after his opponent imploded. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval coasted to a second term with 70 percent. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez beat a former state attorney general by 16 points.
Several of those will take a serious look at 2016 presidential campaigns.
Mary Landrieu is vulnerable, but her chances of winning might have just gone up.
The Louisiana Senate race, as expected, will be decided by a Dec. 6 runoff since no one got to 50 percent. The third-term Democratic senator pulled only 42 percent of the vote, a very dangerous place for an incumbent. Republican Bill Cassidy, who had to fend off tea party challenger Rob Maness, got 41 percent.
The centerpiece of Landrieu’s campaign was that she has clout for the state as chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The senator has now lost her chairmanship.
But Landrieu would have almost certainly been toast if control of the Senate came down to Louisiana. Tens of millions in national money would have poured in, and she wouldn’t have been able to distance herself from Harry Reid.
The fact that the race won’t determine Senate control could allow Landrieu to frame the runoff as a personality contest about who is more likeable. She can also promise to be a check on the GOP Senate. Landrieu did this successfully in 2002, unexpectedly winning a runoff after Republicans took control of the Senate a month before.