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Republican Thom Tillis unseated Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan on Tuesday, winning a lengthy, expensive race in North Carolina after linking Hagan to President Barack Obama and highlighting his own record of accomplishments while leading the state legislature. Democrat Liz Sorrell of Cary, a retired N.C. State University employee, said she voted for Tillis because of Obama's signature health care law, which Hagan supported. She said a relative with a heart condition is paying much more for insurance since the law took effect. "I don't think that the Affordable Care Act for instance covered the small business people," Sorrell said. "I was going to vote for her before I ran into this." (Robertson, 11/4)

Republican Tom Cotton, a conservative tea party congressman, Army veteran and Harvard Law School graduate, ousted two-term Sen. Mark Pryor on Tuesday as Arkansas joined its Southern neighbors in becoming an all-red state. Cotton capitalized on voter opposition to President Obama and fended off Pryor’s attacks on his support for conservative policies, including changes to Medicare and Social Security. (Mascaro, 11/4)

Republican Dave Brat defeated Democrat Jack Trammell on Tuesday to win Virginia’s 7th Congressional District seat in a match of two Randolph-Macon College professors that neither could have predicted when they first decided to seek office. ... Trammell ran in support of Obamacare, immigration reform, women’s reproductive rights and protecting Medicare and Social Security. Trammell accused Brat of threatening Social Security and taking a harsh stance on immigrants in the country, while Brat cast Trammell as a Barack Obama clone on health care who would not hold the line on tax increases. (Nolan, 11/4)

Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., is maintaining a lead of about 12,000 votes over Republican challenger Ed Gillespie Wednesday morning with all but three precincts reporting, according to The Associated Press. ... Gillespie has been a GOP strategist, a lobbyist and an adviser to President George W. Bush. He attempted to define Warner as a Democrat marching in lockstep with his party who has voted with President Barack Obama “97 percent of the time,” most notably for the Affordable Care Act. But Gillespie waited until three weeks before the election to unveil a replacement plan that would give a tax credit to everyone who buys health insurance in the individual market, and other market-oriented measures. (Schmidt and Ramsey, 11/5)