GOP wins final Louisiana Senate race for 52-seat majority

US President-elect Donald Trump (L) and Louisiana Treasurer and Republican Senate candidate John Kennedy wave at a get-out-the-vote rally on December 9, 2016 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

(Image credit: Don Emmert/Getty Images)

published 11 December 2016

Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy won his state's runoff Senate election Saturday, cementing the Republican Party's 52-seat Senate majority. Democrats hoped challenger Foster Campbell would pull off an upset victory, with many donating to his campaign as one last potential bright spot after a disappointing election season that saw widespread GOP gains at the state and federal level.

As of 9:30 p.m. local time, Kennedy held a strong lead of nearly two-thirds of the vote; President-elect Donald Trump also won the state, taking nearly a 20-point margin over Hillary Clinton. Trump traveled to Louisiana to campaign for Kennedy earlier this week, calling the candidate a "good guy" whose win Vice President-elect Mike Pence said would be an "exclamation point" on a great election.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.