GOP keeps control of the House

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., looking at big loss

WASHINGTON – The GOP has easily retained control of the House of Representatives and may end up with its largest majority since the Great Depression.

With Republicans winning a majority in the Senate, the GOP will have control over both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2006.

All 435 House seats were up for grabs, but Republicans had won the 218 races needed to remain in the majority shortly after 11:40 p.m. EST.

As of 8:49 a.m EST, the GOP had won 243 races and the Democrats had won 175.

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Prior to the election, Republicans held 233 seats, Democrats had 199 and three were open.

Fox News projected the GOP would pick up about 12 seats.

That would give the GOP 245 members in the House and its biggest majority since 1946.

Republicans had set a goal of 245, which would be three more than the 242 seats they held after the tea-party fueled victory in 2010.

If Republicans go on to gain 13 seats, they will have their biggest majority since 1932.

For most of the campaign, the nonpartisan and highly respected Cook Report had predicted of a GOP gain of four to 10 seats. But, in the last week, Cook revised its projection to a GOP gain of six to 12 seats, with slightly larger gains not out of the question.

As evidence of a possible late-breaking GOP trend, David Wasserman, editor of House races for the Cook Report, cited three incumbent Democrats in New York whose races slipped into the toss-up category: Reps. Tim Bishop, Sean Patrick Maloney and Dan Maffei.

And, in fact, Democratic fears were largely realized, as Bishop was trounced by Republican Lee Zeldin, 55 percent to 45 percent; Maloney won a narrow victory by one percent; and Republican John Katko throttled Maffei with a whopping 20 point win.

Zeldin told Fox he attributed his win to independents having more faith in the GOP than Democrats to right the economy and deal with major crises. Zeldin will become the sole Jewish Republican member of Congress, after Rep. Eric Cantor,R-Va. resigned, following his primary defeat.

The man who beat Cantor, conservative Republican Dave Brat, cruised to victory in Virginia's 5th District, winning by 24 percent.

Dan Bongino, the former Secret Service agent and author of WND Books’ New York Times bestseller "Life Inside the Bubble" had been clinging to a slender lead well after midnight in the race for a House seat in Maryland's traditionally left-leaning 6th District.

But, as of 2 a.m. EST, with 96.61 percent of the vote counted, the Republican was trailing Democrat John Delaney by less than one percent.

The GOP isn't just in position to grab its biggest majority in the House since the Great Depression; Republican women made history.

Mia Love of Utah will become the first black Republican woman in Congress

Mia Love will become the first black (Haitian-American) woman the GOP has sent to Congress.

She won a by 3.25 percent to represent Utah's 4th District.

30-year-old Republican Elise Stefanik from upstate New York easily obtained her goal of becoming the youngest woman to serve in the House, winning by 22 points.

The big GOP win will  make it all the more difficult for Democrats to regain control in 2016. That prospect was why Democrats as well as Republicans poured so much money into the election, an estimated record of nearly $4 billion.

The cause of the voters' late shift toward the GOP seemed to be fueled by the declining popularity of President Obama, as evidenced in the polls.

The president’s approval rating began to nosedive at the start of last year and now has been abysmal for months. Obama had fallen from a 69 percent approval rating when he took office in January 2009 to 38 percent in September.  By the election, he was mired at 42.1 percent.

Politico reported Democratic Party operatives believed Obama had been dragging down House candidates across the country.

Even more indicting, WND reported how Obama had become so toxic to the Democrats’ Senate candidates, they weren’t just running away from him, they were running against him, and attacking the president in both debates and ads with stinging rebukes one would expect to hear coming from only Republicans.

However, while the big win was good news for Republicans, it may not bode well for conservatives in the House.

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, will have a considerably larger House Republican caucus, meaning he could strike deals with the Obama administration while not needing the support of as many conservatives.

As WND reported, it was intense pressure from conservatives led by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., that caused Boehner to not only drop his own border bill for lack of support, but eventually pass a much stronger one in August.