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Republicans lost control of the vital swing state of Virginia on Tuesday night as anger over the government shutdown and a socially-conservative candidate for governor combined to drive voters into the arms of Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
The controversial former fundraiser for Bill Clinton was projected to beat former state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli by two percentage points after a tense night that saw momentum swing back and forth as results trickled in.
A last-minute surge from voters in the Democrat-leaning suburbs of Washington DC helped clinch victory for McAuliffe shortly before 10pm ET. Democrats also won the battle for lieutenant governor and were within a whisker of securing the post of attorney general – an unprecedented sweep in a state that until recently was a Republican stronghold.
But the narrowness of the defeat for Cuccinelli, who had been as much as 12 points behind in the latest opinion polls, may temper Republican disappointment and help soften calls for the national party to pick more moderate candidates in future.
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McAuliffe nodded to the often bitter, money-driven campaign when he joked to supporters: "I think that every single person in the state of Virginia is glad that the TV ads are now over."
But he made an appeal for bipartisan co-operation with Republicans, a theme which he and the Clintons have used to distance themselves subtly from the Obama White House throughout the campaign. "We want to make Virginia a model for pragmatic leadership ... and bipartisan co-operation," McAuliffe told supporters in his acceptance speech.
Cuccinelli blamed the $15m gulf in campaign finance between the two candidates for his defeat. "We were very heavily outspent but I am glad that we ran on first principles," he told GOP supporters in Richmond.
But he insisted the last-minute recovery in his support showed the unpopularity of Democrat healthcare reforms. "You have sent a message tonight to the president of the United States that you believe that Obamacare is a failure. This race came down to the wire because of Obamacare. That message will go out across America tonight."
In the end, however, it was Cuccinelli's conservative views on abortion together with anger at the Republican-driven government shutdown that drove voters to McAuliffe, a man once seen as the embodiment of Washington machine politics and with a history of chequered business relationships.
Ralph Northam, who comfortably won the race to become Democratic lieutenant governor, credited the unpopularity of Cuccinelli's views on abortion as a major factor in his defeat.
"If there is one thing we have learned in Richmond it is that no group of legislators, most of whom are men, should be telling women what they should and shouldn't be doing with their health," he told party supporters after his victory.
McAuliffe raised substantially more money than his GOP opponent, amassing an estimated $34m, including 37 personal donations worth more than $100,000, to fund a series of television ads painting Cuccinelli as a hardliner whose views were outside the mainstream in a state that is increasingly wealthy and suburban.
The personality-driven campaign by Democrats appeared to have paid off handsomely after early exit polls for CNN released when polling stations closed at 7pm showed McAuliffe ahead by 50% to 43% for Cuccinelli.
But Cuccinelli's vote held up surprisingly well in Republican strongholds in the west and south of Virginia, leaving most pundits unwilling to call the race until late into the evening.
Only when results from liberal Washington suburbs begin pouring in around 9pm did McAuliffe supporters gathered at a hotel in nearby Tysons Corner begin to celebrate.
The Northern Virginia suburbs of DC where McAuliffe dominated are a world away from the blue collar towns in the south of the state where Cuccinelli has been campaigning. The Sheraton Premiere that hosted his campaign party is next door to Porsche and Aston Martin dealerships and just a dozen metro stops from downtown DC.
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