The NewsHour looks at the overall results in the race for the House and Senate, then revisits key races spotlighted on the broadcast during the campaign season. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: When the new 105th Congress convenes in January, almost all of the members who wanted to will return to Capitol Hill. Republican Senator Larry Pressler, however, is one of the exceptions. The three-term incumbent from South Dakota, chairman of the Commerce, Science, & Transportation Committee, lost a tight race to Democratic Congressman Tim Johnson. But Pressler was the only Senate incumbent to lose his re-election bid, and in the House, there were far fewer incumbent casualties than occurred in 1994's Republican Revolution.

REP. HAROLD VOLKMER: The first want to address my words--

KWAME HOLMAN: Among the most notable casualties were ten-term Democrat Harold Volkmer from Missouri, three-term Democrat Bill Orton from Utah, three-term Republican Gary Franks from Connecticut, and two-term Ohio Republican Martin Hoke. Conservative firebrand Robert Dornan of California still doesn't know if he'll be back. Dornan currently leads Democratic challenger Loretta Sanchez by a few hundred votes, making a recount likely. Most House Republican freshmen targeted for defeat, particularly by the AFL-CIO, nevertheless, survived. Congressional Republican Campaign Chairman Bill Paxon stressed that point at his post-election press briefing this morning.

REP. BILL PAXON: As we look down the list, again and again and again, at those folks who are targeted with the biggest expenditures by organized labor, people like John Ensign in Nevada, people like John Christiansen in Nebraska, people like Phil English in Erie, Pennsylvania, or Frank Riggs, and they came through with flying colors. I think the message is very clear, that politics of scare and fear and negativism do not work in American politics.

KWAME HOLMAN: But among those Republican freshmen who didn't survive were Andrea Seastrand of California and Dick Chrysler of Michigan. Runoff elections will be required in December to decide three Texas seats. Still, it's clear House Republicans will return in January with their majority intact, though likely slimmed down to 227 seats to the Democrats' 207 and 1 independent. That's a nine-seat swing in the Democrats' favor, less than they'd hoped for but an important shift, according to Democratic Congressional Campaign Chairman Martin Frost.

MARTIN FROST: Again, we would have preferred to have won, to have won control, but we made a very strong showing, and I think it demonstrates a couple of things: one, that you're going to have to have real bipartisan cooperation during this next session of Congress in the House if you're going to achieve anything because the balance will be so close, particularly with a Democratic President. And I hope that you will have bipartisan cooperation. And it also, I think, demonstrates that the House is very much in play. This is something that I've been saying for the last two years; that for the remainder of this decade, the House is going to be in play every single election.

KWAME HOLMAN: Senate Republicans actually made add two seats to their current majority and hold a 55/45 advantage over Democrats come January. But that's dependent on a victory in the still too-close-call Senate race in Oregon. Republican State Senator Gordon Smith and Democrat Tom Bruggere are locked in a struggle to succeed retiring Republican Mark Hatfield, and it appears a count of absentee ballots later this week will decide the outcome. Senate Republicans held on to their majority thanks to Southern victories by Strom Thurmond in South Carolina, and Jesse Helms in North Carolina.

SENATOR JESSE HELMS: As I saw Dan Rather trying to avoid a--

KWAME HOLMAN: Republicans also captured previously Democratic seats in Arkansas, where Congressman Tim Hutchinson succeeds retiring David Pryor and in Alabama, where Jeff Sessions succeeds retiring Howell Heflin. It could have been worse for Democrats in the South, but Max Cleland, the former head of the Veterans Administration, won the Georgia seat vacated by Sam Nunn. And Mary Landrieau took the Louisiana seat of retiring Bennett Johnston.

Farther North, the New Jersey Senate seat vacated by Bill Bradley was won by Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli, while House colleague Richard Durbin will succeed retiring Democrat Paul Simon in Illinois. And in the hard-fought and high-profile Massachusetts Senate race, Democratic incumbent John Kerry had a relatively easy time defeating popular Republican Governor William Weld.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: As the Grateful Dead--as the Grateful Dead sang and wrote "what a long strange trip this has been."

KWAME HOLMAN: Even though the new Congress will look much like the old one, today's Senate leader Trent Lott said Republicans will take a different approach in dealing with the White House.

SEN. TRENT LOTT, Majority Leader: Again, we have certain responsibilities as a majority to sort of have our agenda and have a schedule of when we will do things, but I think the President is sort of entitled to the first at bat. You know, we're not going to rush out there January the 8th and start trying to pass X number of bills in the first hundred days. Let's see what he has to say and see what he proposes. We will consider that, and where we can, we're going to--we're going to work with him, and if we don't like what he does, or we feel like it's smoke and mirrors, or we don't feel like he addresses some of the serious problems adequately, then we'll do more.

KWAME HOLMAN: Republicans expect to get their first firm indication of where President Clinton wants to go from his inaugural address after the 105th Congress is in session.