The Democratic Majority of Recent Memory

In 2000, Democrats picked up five Senate seats to tie the Senate count at 50 Republican, 50 Democrat. For the next year, Vice President Cheney served as the 101st senator, the tiebreaker. Then liberal Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont became an independent and organized with the Dems to give them a 51/49 majority.

This narrow Dem majority held for about one year, overseen by South Dakota's Tom Daschle, the new majority leader. In the 2002 election, Republicans retook the majority by knocking off Dem senators like Daschle. After the 2004 election, the Republicans had 55 senators. This number has dwindled to 50—at the most—after Tuesday's election.