WINSTON-SALEM: Republican Thom Tillis has unseated US Senator Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Reuters/Ipsos projected on Tuesday, claiming an important prize for Republicans as they gained control of the Senate.
The bitter contest was the most expensive US Senate race in history, with more than $108 million spent by the candidates and outside groups, according to the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation.
"If we lose North Carolina, then we lose the Senate," Obama had told a radio show in Charlotte as he tried to drum up Democratic votes.
"North Carolina is going to be a key test case for the entire country, so let's sure we bring it on home." Many voters, who were bombarded by at least 113,900 TV ads about the race, according to the Center for Public Integrity, said they were unenthusiastic about either candidate in what remained a nearly tied contest going into Election Day.
Hagan, 61, was considered vulnerable as she sought a second term in a polarized state that leaned more heavily in favor of Republicans since she beat Elizabeth Dole for the seat in 2008.
Political analysts said Hagan was effective in tying Tillis, speaker of the Republican-led North Carolina House, to an unpopular state legislature.
But Tillis, 54, apparently made a more convincing argument as he linked Hagan to a Democratic president who has become increasingly unpopular in the Tar Heel state, which he won in the 2008 election but narrowly lost in 2012.
"Certainly there must be very few residents of North Carolina with a working television set who are at this point unaware of Hagan's consistent voting in support for the president's policies," said John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University.
Several voters on Tuesday said they were disgusted by the partisan gridlock in Washington and the state legislature's handling of public education. "I'm really super frustrated with the North Carolina legislature," said Beau Dancy, 58, a general contractor and a Democrat in Winston-Salem.
He said his vote for the incumbent "was more of an anti-vote on (Tillis) than a positive vote on Hagan." In Raleigh, Republican voter Edward Sanders, 59, said he voted for Hagan in 2008 but decided this time to go with Tillis.
"I don't particularly like Tillis, but he seemed more likely to shake things up in Washington," said Sanders, a mechanical engineer. The $108 million spent on the North Carolina race makes it the costliest US Senate contest in history, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The competitive race drew record turnout for a midterm election in the state. With votes still being counted Tuesday night, the State Board of Elections said voting for the 2014 midterm had surpassed the 2010 turnout of 2.7 million.
Republican Governor Pat McCrory said the high turnout should silence critics who claimed the state's overhauled voter law would discourage people from going to the polls.
"The naysayers were dead wrong," McCrory told reporters.
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