Nov 5, 2014 4 min read

Wake Up To Politics - November 5, 2014

To read today's edition of Wake Up To Politics in a PDF format, click here. Continue reading to find the text of the Wake Up in the body of the email!

Wednesday, November 5, 2014
734 Days Until Election Day 2016
It's Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - Results Day, I'm Gabe Fleisher for Wake Up To Politics, and reporting from WUTP world HQ in my bedroom - Good morning: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!!!
To send me questions, comments, tips, new subscribers, and more: email me at wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com. To learn more about WUTP or subscribe, visit the site: wakeuptopolitics.com, or read my tweets and follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Wakeup2Politics.
Headline - Results: Republicans Win Senate

For at least the next two years, Republicans will be the majority party in both houses of Congress, after a GOP wave Tuesday that brought the party wins across the country.
Republicans seized the U.S. Senate, winning seven Democratic-held seats and flipping them to the GOP column. When the new Congress is sworn in in January, the Republican Party will control at least 52 seats, compared to the Democrats’ 43 (2 Independents currently caucus with the Democratic Party, but could potentially switch parties).
Nearly all of the competitive Senate races were won by Republicans, who beat a number Democratic incumbents, most significantly Kay Hagan (NC), Mark Udall (CO), and others. But the biggest surprise of the midterm Senate races has not even been decided yet: Virginia, where Democratic Sen. Mark Warner was never expected to have trouble, but is barely leading Republican Ed Gillespie. Virginia is one of three states where Senate races are still going on, the others being Louisiana (which will not be decided until a December 6 runoff) and Alaska (where Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is trailing Republican Dan Sullivan, 45% to 49%.)
Democrats won just one of the contested Senate seats: New Hampshire, where Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen fended off a tough challenge from former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R). Every single Republican incumbent up won re-election, the most notable being Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who will now become Senate Majority Leader, at the head of the first Republican Senate majority since 2006.
The GOP also retained control of the U.S. House, building on their majority in the chamber. The party will have at least 242 House seats in the next Congress, nine more than in the last. The increase came from 13 Democratic seats which fill into Republican hands, including conservative districts the GOP has been trying to win for decades.
Republicans defeated Democratic incumbents across the country, from longtime Rep. Nick Rahall in West Virginia to Rep. John Barrow in Georgia. Even Democrats representing liberal districts fell victim to the “red wave,” including Rep. Brad Schneider of suburban Chicago and Rep. Dan Maffei of upstate New York. Meanwhile, just one GOP House seat was one by Democrats (Gwen Graham, daughter of former Sen. Bob Graham, defeated Republican Rep. Steve Southerland in Florida), with incumbents across the map rising to victory. Even the indicted Republican Rep. Michael Grimm, who will stand in trial next month on 20 counts of fraud, tax evasion, and perjury…beat his Democratic challenger in a landslide.
Finally, the Republican wave went beyond Congress, and into State Houses across America, with the GOP pulling off gubernatorial upsets in Maryland, a deep blue state that unexpectedly elected Republican Larry Hogan in a landslide over Democrat Anthony Brown, and Kansas where Gov. Sam Brownback was re-elected, despite many believing he would be defeated.
Currently Democratic governorships that turned red Tuesday include Massachusetts, where Martha Coakley lost it for the Democrats again; and Illinois, where Republican Bruce Rauner defeated Gov. Pat Quinn. It was a banner night for vulnerable Republican gubernatorial incumbents, as well, including Govs. Paul LePage (MI), Rick Scott (FL), Rick Snyder (MI), and Scott Walker (WI).
All in all, Republicans are waking up today jubilant, and Democrats handily defeated. The numbers alone could tell us that story, but the effects of this election will stretch into the next two years: Barack Obama’s last in the White House, and beyond, with implications for the 2016 presidential election.
The United States government is officially split for two years, between a Democratic president and a fully Republican Congress. What will this mean for the agendas of both President Obama and new Republican majorities? It’s shouldn’t take us long to find out.

Election Central

Whiteboard Wednesday All the TV networks have their giant, fancy high-tech touch screen boards…but at Wake Up To Politics, we have a whiteboard!
If you follow me on Twitter, then you should be all too familiar with my whiteboard (which I used in the weeks leading up to the 2012 presidential election to draw – by hand – predictions in the race, and updated throughout Tuesday night to reflect the race for control of the Senate).
Now, in Whiteboard Wednesday’s triumphant return after over two years of dormancy…I present: the Wake Up To Politics official map of the Senate 2014:
NOTE: On the back of my whiteboard, I kept track of the Senate math throughout the night, which counts up what the map portrays. On the map, states with no Senate race this year are white – but they are counted for the party that holds them here. This is the math so far, not including the three states colored black on the map, which represent undecided races.
PLEASE look at the whiteboard here in the PDF version!

White House Watch

The President’s Schedule After a shellacking for his party in Tuesday’s midterm elections, President Barack Obama will hold a rare White House press conference at 2:50 PM Eastern Time today.
The press conference, first announced in a tweet by White House press secretary Josh Earnest, will be Obama’s chance to “share his take” on the midterms, devastating to his party and his agenda for the next two years.