At the Sheraton in Seattle, a huge crowd of Maria Cantwell supporters in the main ballroom cheered wildly as the U.S. House fell from Republican hands.

There were other parties going on at the hotel. At a combined party for supporters of state Initiative 937 (which mandates that 15 percent of Washington's energy come from renewable sources by 2020) and opponents of Initiative 933 (which would have forced the government to pay landowners to follow land-use laws or waive the rules) and Initiative 920 (which would have repealed the state estate tax), revelers celebrated a definitive win for I-937 and definitive losses for I-933 and I-920.

Anti-933 spokesman Aaron Ostrom, noting that I-933 was failing even in conservative rural areas, said, "Why would rural Washington want to pass a law that's going to have huge negative impacts and turn farmland into development?" I-937 spokesman Bryan Flint, meanwhile, noted that even if you only counted the votes outside famously liberal King County, their progressive measure was winning 51 to 49 percent.

Over at the party for Transit Now and Seattle Proposition 1, Mayor Greg Nickels's road-and-bridge-maintenance proposal, the mood was similarly jubilant. Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, who showed up around 9:00 p.m., was upbeat despite the fact that his boss was losing on three issues he had championed: strip clubs (a referendum upholding the four-foot rule for strip clubs was failing by a margin of 56 to 44 percent), stadium subsidies (a ban on future subsidies was passing 76 to 34 percent), and roads and bridges (the mayor's maintenance package was losing narrowly).

"I'm surprised it wasn't even more lopsided," Ceis said of the strip-club and stadium-subsidy proposals. Of the road-maintenance tax, Ceis said he expected the numbers to flip by the end of the night. "If history is any indicator, we're going to be well above 50 percent" before the night was over.