WASHINGTON -- Dismal poll numbers before the election foreshadowed a historic loss by the Democratic Party on Tuesday.
In a radio show before polls closed on election day, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged that many states were leaning Republican. "This is probably the worst possible group of states for Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower," he said with a clear sense of dread, referring to the president whose party lost by a landslide in the 1958 midterm elections.