Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts wins re-election against independent challenger

Republican Sen. Pat Roberts has won re-election in Kansas, surviving a late scare in a state where Republicans have won every Senate race since the late 1930s.

With 54 percent of the vote in, Roberts has 51 percent support, against businessman and Independent candidate Greg Orman with 45 percent, plus 4 percent for the Libertarian candidate. Roberts has been projected as the winner by both CBS News and Fox News.

Roberts previously fought off a Tea Party-aligned primary challenger, who sought to tap into dissatisfaction with the very long-serving incumbent. The general election race then shot to the top tier in September, when Democratic nominee Chad Taylor dropped out of the race.

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This left Republicans facing unified opposition from Orman, who they then sought to portray as a proxy for President Obama and the Democrats. They also brought in Kansas political legend Bob Dole to give Roberts an extra boost.

For his part, Orman played coy on which party he would organize with, if control of the Senate were in his hands — even saying that he could potentially switch sides in the middle of the Senate term itself, if he was unsatisfied with how the Senate was being run. Meanwhile, Democrats had openly hoped that Orman would caucus with them in the Senate, and potentially save their majority.