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Lynn Neary talks to Mara Liasson for an election update as polls start to close.

Robert Siegel talks with Ron Elving about the big picture of Tuesday's elections.

The battle for the Senate was a proving ground for the new Citizens United politics. Outside groups unleashed heavily funded barrages of attack ads meant to help elect candidates while letting them keep their distance from the nastiness. In Ohio and Virginia, the tactic failed in rather dramatic ways.

Voters in North Carolina put a Republican in their governor's office for the first time in two decades, and New Hampshire elected a new female Democratic governor. But the closely watched races in Montana and Washington, where Democrats currently serve as governors, remained too close to call.

It wasn't a great night for the Republican Party, losing bids for the White House and control of the Senate. But Republicans did retain the majority in the House. Speaker John Boehner found some consolation in that, and speaking to supporters Tuesday night, he remained steadfast in his pursuit of a conservative agenda.

After voting for Barack Obama in 2008, the state went for Mitt Romney Tuesday night. It also elected Republican Mike Pence as governor. There was an exception to the red tide that swept across the Hoosier state. Democrats picked up a Senate seat once held by outgoing Republican Richard Lugar.

More than an hour before taking the stage to formally announce his re-election, @Barack Obama tweeted his victory. He wrote, "This happened because of you." Obama was one of millions of people who tweeted on Election Day. Traffic on the social networking site peaked at 11:19 p.m. Tuesday when the TV networks called the race.

The nation's economy has been rebuilding since the recession ended in 2009, and in this election, the economy was a central issue from the beginning. Unemployment stands at 7.9 percent — slightly higher than when President Obama took office. In the end, the president handily rolled to re-election vowing to complete the country's recovery.

In Boca Raton, Fla., BocaNewsNow reports a woman showed up with a shirt that said Mitt. She was denied entry to vote. But a closer inspection of her shirt showed the Republican candidate's first name was misspelled. An election supervisor let her vote after confirming the shirt said MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Although exit polls showed a majority think the country is on the wrong track, voters still gave President Obama a second chance and four more years to govern. For a look at what to expect in a second term, Renee Montagne talks to Neera Tanden, who runs the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.