ELECTION UPDATE | GOP mounting powerful bid for Senate control

WASHINGTON (AP) — Resurgent Republicans captured a West Virginia seat long in Democratic hands and bid for control of the Senate and a tighter grip on the House Tuesday in elections shaped by deep voter discontent with President Barack Obama.

The party’s leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, dispatched Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky after a $78 million campaign of unrelieved negativity.

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito was the GOP winner for a Senate seat in West Virginia, the first of her party to make that claim since 1956. Sen. Thad Cochran, nearly dethroned by a tea party challenger earlier in the year, won a seventh term in Mississippi.

Republicans also reached out for relatively easy pickings among Senate seats held by Democrats in South Dakota and Montana, and took aim at Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas.

The Republicans needed to gain six seats in all to oust a Democratic Senate majority in place since 2006.

No matter which party emerged with control of the Senate, a new chapter in divided government was inevitable in a nation marked by profound unease over the future and dissatisfaction with its political leaders. Obama has two more years in the White House, and Republican control over the House seemed likely to increase.

There were 36 gubernatorial elections on the ballot, and several incumbents struggled against challengers. Two Republicans were not among them: Govs. Nikki Haley in South Carolina and John Kasich in Ohio, both re-elected with ease. Kasich was one of several potential presidential candidates on the ballot across several states.

In a footnote to one of the year’s biggest political surprises, college professor Dave Brat was elected to the House from Virginia, several months after he defeated Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary.

After years of a sluggish economic recovery and foreign crises aplenty, the voters’ mood was sour.

Nearly two thirds of those interviewed after casting ballots said the country was seriously on the wrong track. Only about 30 percent said it was generally going in the right direction.