New England to Have No Republican Senators in January After Collins Defeat

New England will have no Republican members of the U.S. Senate when the new Congress begins in January, following Susan Collins' defeat in Maine, WBUR reported Friday.

Collins, a five-term Republican senator, lost her reelection bid to Democrat Troy Jackson. The change will remove the region's last Republican senator from the next Senate, not from the current Congress before her term ends.

The result does not mean every senator from New England is a Democrat. Maine's Angus King and Vermont's Bernie Sanders are independents who caucus with Senate Democrats, the New Haven Register noted in its analysis of the regional shift.

New England's six states hold 12 Senate seats. The January lineup will mark a sharp change for a region that once elected many Republican senators, while leaving the parties' broader political future in the region open.