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Republicans capped a banner election year Saturday by ousting Louisiana Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, completing a rout of once-invincible Democrats from the Deep South.

The commanding victory by three-term Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge was virtually preordained when the Democrats' national campaign arm abandoned the race after Landrieu failed to win outright reelection on Nov. 4, forcing Saturday's runoff.

The seat was the ninth picked up this year by Republicans, who also knocked off Senate incumbents in Arkansas and North Carolina, pushing the GOP's new majority to 54 of 100 seats starting in January.

Speaking at a boisterous victory rally in his district in the state capital, Cassidy alluded to the GOP's nationwide romp last month.

On Nov. 4, the American people sent a message, he said, lowering his voice and speaking distinctly. They sent a message that they did not like the direction our country was going in. Now, you in this room, our state, is the exclamation mark to that message.

Landrieu conceded in a speech to supporters at a hotel the Roosevelt, she noted just outside New Orleans' French Quarter.

Tonight we have so much to be proud of, said Landrieu, surrounded on stage by her large family. A record of courage, honesty and integrity and delivering for the state when it mattered the most, in some of our darkest hours, including Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. So the joy has been in the fight. It's been a blessing. It's been a fight worth waging.

The defeat of the three-term incumbent senator was a serious blow to one of the dynastic families of Louisiana politics; Landrieu's brother, Mitch, is a former lieutenant governor now serving as New Orleans mayor, a position held by their father, Moon, in the 1970s.

More broadly, the loss carried heavy symbolic weight.

Sen. Landrieu is one of a dying breed a white Southern Democrat holding federal office and she was fighting not just Cassidy, a lackluster opponent who largely ducked public appearances, but decades-long forces that have transformed the region from a Democratic stronghold to arguably the most zealously Republican redoubt in the nation.

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Bill Cassidy defeats Democrat Mary Landrieu in Louisiana Senate race

Melinda Deslatte and Bill Barrow, The Associated Press Published Saturday, December 6, 2014 10:05PM EST

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy has defeated Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, denying her a fourth term and extending the GOP's domination of the 2014 midterm elections that put Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Barack Obama's tenure.

With Cassidy's victory, the GOP will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now. Republican victories in two Louisiana House districts Saturday - including the seat Cassidy now holds - ensure at least 246 seats, compared to 188 for Democrats, the largest GOP advantage since the Truman administration after World War II. An Arizona recount leaves one race still outstanding.

In Louisiana, early returns showed Cassidy with a wide lead.

Landrieu had narrowly led a Nov. 4 primary ballot that included eight candidates from all parties. But at 42 percent, she fell well below her marks in previous races, leaving the incumbent scrambling in a one-month runoff campaign that Republicans dominated via the air waves while national Democrats financially abandoned her effort.

Landrieu's defeat is a blow for one of Louisiana's most famous political families, leaving her brother, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, to carry the banner. The GOP sweep also denied former Gov. Edwin Edwards a political comeback; the colorful 87-year-old politician, who had served four terms as governor, sought to regain public office after serving eight years in federal prison on corruption charges.

In the South, Democrats will be left without a single governor or U.S. senator across nine states stretching from the Carolinas to Texas. And the House delegations from the same region are divided almost entirely by race, with white Republicans representing majority-white districts, while majority non-white districts are represented by black or Hispanic Democrats.

The Louisiana Senate race mirrored contests in other states Obama lost in 2012, with Landrieu, 59, joining Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan and Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor in defeat. Democrats ceded seats in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia after incumbents opted not to run again.

Like victorious Republicans in those races, Cassidy, 57, made his bid against Landrieu as more about Obama than about his own vision for the job. An Illinois native, Cassidy made few public appearances during the runoff, seeking to avoid missteps that could change the race.

But in a state where 73 percent of white voters on Nov. 4 told pollsters they "strongly disapproved" of the president, that was enough to prevent Landrieu from finding her footing. Cassidy also enjoyed a prodigious advertising advantage in the runoff: Of every dollar spent by outside groups during the one-month runoff, 97 cents benefited the congressman.

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Democrat who introduced Keystone XL bill defeated in U.S. Senate race

BATON ROUGE, La. Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy has defeated Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, denying her a fourth term and extending the GOP's domination of the 2014 midterm elections that put Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Barack Obama's tenure.

With Cassidy's victory, Republicans will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now. Republican victories in two Louisiana House districts Saturday including the seat Cassidy now holds ensure at least 246 seats, compared to 188 for Democrats, the largest GOP advantage since the Truman administration after World War II. An Arizona recount leaves one race still outstanding.

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Democrat Mary Landrieu defeated in Louisiana Senate runoff

Thousands of refugees are fleeing Syria for Sweden. Photo: TT

After the nationalist Sweden Democrat party called for Sweden's snap election to be a 'referendum on immigration', a group of veteran politicians has called on the nation's other political groups to engage in debates about refugee numbers or risk losing votes.

Writing in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, four politicians from Sweden's conservative Christian Democrat and Centre parties said that while the Sweden Democrats were wrong to call for immigration to be cut by up to 90 percent in Sweden, the country's immigration and integration strategies deserved a more openly critical discussion.

Currently none of Sweden's centre-right or centre-left parties are against the country's liberal immigration laws, which have resulted in the country taking in more refugees per capita than any other nation in the EU.

All of the mainstream parties have so far refused to enter into immigration discussions with the Sweden Democrats - a group with Nazi roots that has sought to establish itself as a populist party and scored almost 13 percent of the vote in September's general election. It is now the third largest political group in parliament.

"To categorically ignore the Sweden Democrats' presence in parliament is to give them a populist free ticket instead of fighting their xenophobia," the former politicians wrote in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Friday. "We believe that the parties should be able to converse with the Sweden Democrats."

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Immigration debate intensifies in Sweden

BATON ROUGE, La. Mary Landrieu, the last Deep South Democrat in the U.S. Senate, was defeated in a runoff election Saturday by Bill Cassidy, a Republican congressman who incessantly attacked the incumbent for her support of President Barack Obama.

With Cassidy holding more than 60 percent of the vote, the Associated Press called the victory for him shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. in what had been the last undecided Senate race of the midterm elections. The Republicans gained a total of nine Senate seats in this cycle, giving them 54 senators and firm control of the upper chamber when the 114th Congress convenes in January.

For Democrats, Saturday's outcome was yet another sobering reminder of their party's declining prospects in the South, a region they dominated for much of the 20th century. Landrieu was the last statewide elected Democrat in Louisiana, and Cassidy will join a fellow Louisiana Republican, David Vitter, in the Senate, making it the first time in 138 years that a Democrat from the state has not sat in the Senate.

Speaking to supporters at the Crowne Plaza Hotel here, Cassidy said, "This victory happened because people in Louisiana voted for a government which serves us but does not tell us what to do. Thank y'all."

Even though Landrieu narrowly edged out Cassidy in a multicandidate primary in November, his victory was widely expected. A second conservative candidate with a significant following, Rob Maness, ran a strong third in the primary, and subsequently endorsed Cassidy.

As in much of the South, Louisiana has seen many white Democrats defect to the GOP. Compounding Democrats' problems was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which forced roughly 125,000 reliably Democratic voters to permanently relocate to other states.

Landrieu is defeated in Senate runoff in Louisiana 12/07/14 [Last modified: Sunday, December 7, 2014 12:14am] Photo reprints | Article reprints

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Landrieu is defeated in Senate runoff in Louisiana