The Morning After Shift in Congress, GOP and Democrats Say They're Ready to Move On

Nov. 3, 2010— -- The morning after the GOP gave a collective shout of victory and Democrats retreated to lick their wounds, leaders in both parties vowed to set the mudslinging aside to try and find a compromise on the economy, tax cuts and job creation.

"It's clear tonight who the winners really are," U.S. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said during his victory speech Tuesday night. "And that's the American people."

Despite promises of cooperation, both parties seemed today to be eyeing their opponents warily.

Boehner, poised to replace California Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House when the new Congress convenes in January, received a phone call just after midnight from President Obama, who offered both congratulations and an offer of cooperation between the parties.

Though Republicans trounced the Democrats in the House races, the Dems held onto their majority in the Senate – though just barely, winning the requisite 51 seats to retain control.

One of those seats stayed with powerhouse Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, whose 40 years in office had been strongly challenged by Tea Party activist Sharron Angle. Reid also got a call from Obama after the results came in.

"I think this is a time when we need to look at what happened," he told "Good Morning America." "Anytime you have a new president in a time of urgency as President Obama found himself at the beginning of the last Congress … there's a lot we have to do. We found ourselves in a big hole from the previous eight years."

It's also a time, he said, to move on.

"We all know that our majority is smaller than what it was, but I hope that the leader of the Republicans ... will understand that we have to work together," Reid said. "Just saying no doesn't do the trick."

Obama is scheduled to speak today on the election results at 1 p.m. from the East Room at the White House. Obama's policies, especially on the economy and healthcare, were widely blamed for voter shift this year.

It was a change of heart that meant big wins for the Tea Party. Propelled in seemingly equal parts by voter dissatisfaction, headline-making statements and powerhouse Sarah Palin, the Tea Party notched wins for Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida.

Tea Party's Christine O'Donnell Blames Loss on Lack of GOP Support

The Tea Party movement also failed in Delaware, where Christine O'Donnell -- one of the most outspoken Tea Party activists in the country -- lost by double digits to Democrat Christopher Coons in Vice President Joe Biden's old Senate seat.

O'Donnell today blamed her loss in part on the mainstream GOP's initial refusal to back her candidacy after she pulled off an upset in the September primary.

"I think the only thing that really would have made a difference is if the Delaware GOP would have unified," she told "Good Morning America" today.

"We spent the good four weeks after the campaign reaching out to many Delaware prominent Republicans," she said. "By the time we got their support we had two weeks left."

Though O'Donnell wasn't on the winning side of what some have dubbed the "Palin effect" the former Alaskan governor saw six of her 11 endorsed candidates for governor walk away with win -- including Rubio, who she called "maverick-y" -- and 21 so far out of 41 House candidates.

The makeup of the Senate and House majorities are already cemented, but several races across the country are still too close to call.

In Palin's home state of Alaska, Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski may win her write-in campaign, which would make her the first senator to successfully mount such a campaign since the 1954.

Murkowski was slated to lose her seat to Palin-backed Tea Party candidate Joe Miller, but an eleventh-hour surge pushed her ahead in the polls. Early this morning she held a majority of the vote with 41 percent over Miller and Democrat Scott Adams.

Recounts are a possibility in the Colorado Senate race where Ken Buck and Michael Bennet are locked in a dead heat and in Washington state, where Demcoratic Sen. Patty Murray holds a sliver-thin lead over Republican Dino Rossi.

And in Connecticut, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley leads Democrat Dan Malloy by just a percentage point. Ballots there are still being counted after the state's biggest city ran out of ballots, prompting polls to stay open later.

Democrats Lose Support From Independents, Women

Democrats are expected to go back and take a look at who came out to the polls on Tuesday. In 2008, President Obama drew huge crowds of first-time voters, young people, independents and women.

But just two years later, the independent vote that factored so heavily in Obama's presidential win had switched over to the GOP.

Though women voters still leaned Democrat, the margin was, on average, just 1 percent compared with 13 percent in 2008. And women didn't come out to the polls in droves as they did two years ago.

But Obama is just the latest in a line of presidents who were forced to swallow a change in power during their first terms. Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all stood before the American people after mid-term elections and conceded that they would need to find a way to work with their opposition.

Tea Party leader, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who won his own race, vowed today to take advantage of the House majority in a way the GOP didn't previously.

"This does give Republicans a second chance and I'm glad to see the determination from Boehner and others in the House," DeMint said. "This time we're going to do it the right way."

Though candidate after candidate Tuesday night vowed to get to work, early cracks may be starting to appear in the victorious GOP.

"We make a grave mistake," Rubio said during his victory speech in Florida Tuesday, "if we believe tonight's results are the embrace of the Republican Party."

ABC News' Jonathan Karl, Jake Tapper, Claire Shipman and Neal Karlinsky contributed to this report.