Final Results

Obviously you can see the numbers elsewhere. But what happened is that Republicans did substantially better-than-expected in the House. The Douglas Hibbs projection forecast about a 45 seat pickup, the generic ballot polling forecast about a 55 seat pickup, and in reality they got a 65 seat pickup which I believe will create the largest House Republican caucus since the Great Depression. Given the vagaries of Southern politics, I'm pretty confident we've seen bigger conservative majorities in the past but the point is it's a big win.

Conversely in the Senate the GOP has underperformed. Harry Reid survived in Nevada. Michael Bennet looks like he'll probably hang on in Colorado. A likely Republican win in Delaware was turned into an easy win for Chris Coons.

Realistically, I think the House margin matters much more. If the GOP had pulled off a very small majority, the White House could hope to attempt to govern via negotiations with a small block of relatively moderate representatives. With a big majority, legislative negotiations need to run through John Boehner. And any Obama-Boehner deal that could pass a Senate with 53 Democrats could also pass a Senate with 51 Democrats or even 48 Democrats. For a bill to become a law under this configuration you'd need a really substantial level of cross-party agreement that's a bit hard to imagine at the moment. But that means that the days of the 111th Congress when things would come down to intense negotiations with individual Senators are probably over. Deals will be big picture or else more likely the deals won't be done.