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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -

Sen. Mary Landrieu grew hoarse on the campaign trail Saturday.

The Louisiana Democrat had been shouting all week, rallying her supporters at campaign events up and down the state, fighting to hold off a challenge from Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy to the bitter end.

"The national race is over, but honey, our race is not over" she cried at a campaign rally on the eve of the runoff election.

But there was every indication that nobody's listening.

Saturday morning, when she arrives to vote, only four cameras are there to capture the moment, compared with what one staffer described as a gaggle 50-strong during the November 4 vote.

Landrieu has trailed in every public poll of the race. Most recently, in a poll out this week from Republican firm WPA Research, she was down by 24 points. Early voting among African-Americans, a voting bloc key to her chances for a win, was down, but Republican early voting was up.

With Republicans locking down control of the Senate in the November elections, Louisiana lost some of its urgency for national Democrats. The National Democratic Senatorial Committee withdrew its investment early on in the runoff and left her to fend for herself, as did most of the major Democratic spending groups.

The lopsided fight frustrates Landrieu, who on Friday, unprompted, chastised the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for having "abandoned us."

"I just don't believe in leaving a soldier on the field, and that's what they did," she says.

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Louisiana Democrat said she feels abandoned

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Bill Cassidy, a doctor and Republican congressman, defeated three-term Sen. Mary L. Landrieu in a runoff election Saturday, sending home the last Deep South Democrat in the U.S. Senate, according to the Associated Press.

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

More generally, the political terrain for a moderate Democrat like Landrieu has become increasingly challenging in Louisiana. White Democratic voters have continued their defection to the Republican Party, and roughly 125,000 reliably Democratic voters -- many of them African-Americans -- were permanently displaced from the state by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Cassidy, 57, is an associate professor of medicine at Louisiana State University who entered the House of Representatives in 2009. With his election, the Republican Party picked up nine Senate seats in the midterm elections, giving it a total of 54 senators when the 114th Congress convenes in January.

Cassidy closely followed the Republicans' strategy this year of nationalizing congressional elections. His campaign and outside groups supporting him regularly noted that Landrieu had voted with Obama 97 percent of the time.

Louisiana regularly ranks as one of the poorest and unhealthiest states in the country, but Cassidy's biography allowed him to preemptively combat any suggestion that he was insensitive to the needs of the poor.

According to his congressional website, he treated uninsured patients at the public Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge for two decades, founded a community health care clinic, and in 2005 set up an emergency medical facility for Katrina evacuees in an abandoned Kmart.

In the House, Republicans will hold at least 246 seats come January, according to election results Saturday, giving the GOP a commanding majority that matches the party's post-World War II high during Democratic President Harry S. Truman's administration.

The GOP retained control of two seats in runoffs in Louisiana, expanding the advantage for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who can afford defections from his increasingly conservative caucus and still get legislation passed. Combined with the Republican takeover of the Senate, Congress will be all-GOP for the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term.

The latest count gives the GOP a 246-188 majority. One race, in Arizona, is still outstanding.

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Democrat Landrieu is defeated in Louisiana Senate runoff

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