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: Colorado's open Senate seat was the battleground for Republican Congressman Wayne Allard and Democrat Tom Strickland. Strickland called Allard an extremist, too conservative for Colorado. But Republican Allard prevailed in this battle over who was the true moderate.

REP. WAYNE ALLARD: We did it together, didn't we?

KWAME HOLMAN: Still, it was close--Allard 51 percent, Democrat Strickland 46 percent. In House races, freshman Republicans elected in the 1994 GOP takeover were in the spotlight. Washington State Republican Randy Tate lost his bid for a second term to Democrat Adam Smith, whose campaign was bolstered by AFL-CIO ads that portrayed Republican Tate as too far to the right for this traditionally swing district.

AD SPOKESPERSON: It should be illegal to do something like that.

RICK WHITE: I'm doing just great. How's everybody doing there?

KWAME HOLMAN: Rick White, another Washington State Republican freshman, apparently was successful in fending off charges he is a clone of Speaker Newt Gingrich made by Democratic opponent Jeff Coopersmith. Republican White focused on a theme of reduced federal bureaucracy and devolving power back to the states to pull out a four-point victory last night.

REP. PHIL ENGLISH, (R) Pennsylvania: How you doin'? Good to see you guys.

KWAME HOLMAN: On the other side of the country, Pennsylvania Republican Phil English also won after distancing himself from the conservative agenda in Congress, including voting to increase the minimum wage.

REP. PHIL ENGLISH: I think clearly the freshman class was depicted as being much more ideologically monolithic than it really was in the final analysis.

KWAME HOLMAN: In Tennessee, the NewsHour tracked Republican freshman Van Hilleary, also an AFL-CIO target, who nonetheless handily defeated Democratic opponent Mark Stewart, and in a rematch of a tight race two years ago, Democratic Congressman Bart Gordon won a seventh term easily defeating Republican Steve Gill.

Redistricting ordered by the Supreme Court gave some incumbents new territory and new problems in the 1996 campaign. In Georgia's new 4th district, Democrat Cynthia McKinney won her race over John Mitnick.

In Texas, redistricting reshaped 13 races from Dallas to Houston. In a district with 11 candidates on the ballot, Democratic Congressman Ken Bentsen got 34 percent of the vote, followed by Republican Dolly Madison McKenna. The two meet in a runoff December 10th.

Voters also decided a variety of local and statewide ballot initiatives yesterday, among them approval of California's Proposition 209, ending race and gender preferences in the public sector. But they rejected Proposition 211, which would have made it easier for people to sue corporations for stock fraud.

Californians also voted against regulating HMO's. Californians and Arizonans also approved measures making marijuana use legal for medicinal purposes. And in Colorado, voters defeated a proposed state constitutional amendment codifying the right of parents to raise and educate their children. Opponents argued the measure would lead to increased child abuse and never-ending curriculum battles on the classroom.