Good News from all over

From the country's heartland, voters sent messages that altered America's culture wars and dismayed the religious right — defending abortion rights in South Dakota, endorsing stem cell research in Missouri, and, in a national first, rejecting a same-sex marriage ban in Arizona.

Almost 79 million people voted in Tuesday's election, with Democrats drawing more support than Republicans for the first time in a midterm election since 1990, according to a private analysis.

Those early exit polls also showed that three in four voters said corruption was very important to their vote, and they tended to vote Democratic. In a sign of a dispirited GOP base, most white evangelicals said corruption was very important to their vote — and almost a third of them turned to the Democrats.

Wall Street rose for a third straight session Wednesday, with the Dow Jones industrials reaching another record close as investors grew more confident that a huge victory by Democrats in congressional elections would result in gridlock and keep lawmakers out of the way of business interests. Stocks showed gains following the announcement that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will resign.

Democrat Nick Lampson won the U.S. House seat long held by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, trouncing a Republican write-in candidate in the state's most closely watched congressional race. Lampson's victory marks the first time a Democrat had represented that district in more than 20 years.

The wave of voter discontent that put Democrats in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives also hit state legislatures, where the party won control of more chambers than Republicans. Democrats picked up control of at least nine chambers in Tuesday's election, winning the House and Senate in Iowa and New Hampshire, the House in Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, and Indiana, and the Wisconsin Senate, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.