Three races to go, and the democrats might win the Senate: at midnight, the only certainty was that there would be uncertainty early Wednesday morning.
Virginia, too close to call in spite of Jim Webb's apparent advantage, is headed for a recall mandated by the local law if the margin of victory is as tight as half of a percentage point.
The democrats were loosing hope on the Tennessee front, where Harold Ford Jr. did not seem likely to become the first black senator since reconstruction. They were more optimistic regarding Missouri and Montana, where the two republican incumbents were in trouble.
The night might be long, but a sweep of both houses was at hand.
That would be the strong reaction that a lot of the world opinion had stopped to believe possible - even though there might be some over-reaching in chalking it all to the discontent about the war in Iraq, and ignoring the more domestic preoccupation with massive corruption scandals.