Barack Obama weakened by poll disaster

Health reforms under threat as Republicans snatch Senate

Defeat: US President Barack Obama (Picture: AP)

5 November 2014

Barack Obama was today left reeling from the most devastating electoral defeat of his presidency.

Republican rivals snatched control of the Senate, seriously denting the President’s hopes of radical reform before he steps down.

Their success could torpedo his plans to extend his controversial flagship health policy Obamacare and means that a shake-up of immigration laws is probably off the table.

The most powerful Democrat in Congress, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, described it as a “difficult night”.

But Republicans seized on the result, claiming it showed the US public wanted “a new direction”.

Mr Obama watched from the White House as results trickled in but stayed in the background during mid-term elections seen as a vote on his own popularity — now at an all-time low.

Ahead of the ballot he lowered ex- pectations saying: “This is probably the worst possible group of states for Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower. There are a lot of states that are being contested where they just tend to tilt Republican.”

The vote saw about one third of seats in the Senate and all in the House of Representatives up for grabs, along with 36 out 50 state governor positions. With some results yet to be confirmed, Republicans held 52 seats in the Senate and 243 in the House, compared with the Democrats’ 45 and 175.

Even voters in Mr Obama’s home state Illinois cast out their Democrat governor and replaced him with a Republican, despite the President campaigning on his behalf. When the new Congress is sworn in after New Year’s Eve, it will mark the first time Republicans have held both chambers since 2006. The party also made gains among the governorships.

But national exit polls showed huge frustration with politicians from both parties. Some 59 per cent of voters were “dissatisfied or angry” with Mr Obama and 60 per cent with Republican leaders in Congress.

Ex-Obama White House adviser Bill Burton said: “This is a new chapter in the presidency and it doesn’t have to be a defeated one. We lost in a lot of places, but the truth is this could open up some real opportunity to actually get some things done.”

Analysts highlighted how Bill Clinton’s last two years in office were his most productive, despite a Republican-controlled Congress. But deals with Republicans looked harder for Mr Obama after the man set to lead the party vowed to take America in a “new direction”.

Senator Mitch McConnell, now the most powerful Republican, said Mr Obama’s “big government experiment” had gone on long enough and it was “time to turn this country around”. In his victory speech he told a cheering crowd: “I’ve heard your concerns. I’ve made them my own. You will be heard in Washington.”

His fellow Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a potential 2016 Presidential candidate, said he wanted to repeal “every last vestige of Obamacare”.

Iowa Republican senator Joni Ernst, who has boasted of castrating hogs in her youth, said in her acceptance speech: “We’re going to Washington and going to make them squeal.”

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