Delaware

State Highlights

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. was on the ballot in Delaware twice in this election, once as Senator Barack Obama’s candidate for vice president and once as a candidate for re-election to the Senate.

Not surprisingly, the Obama-Biden ticket easily carried the state that Mr. Biden has represented in the Senate since 1972.

In his Senate race, Mr. Biden overwhelmed his Republican challenger, Christine O’Donnell, a TV commentator who had once worked at the Republican National Committee.

The state also voted for a new governor to succeed Ruth Ann Minner, a Democrat who could not run again because of term limits. The governor-elect is Jack Markell, a Democrat and third-term state treasurer. Markell defeated Bill Lee, a Republican who is a retired Superior Court judge. Jeffrey Brown, a bartender who ran for governor as the candidate of the Blue Enigma Party, which he founded in 2006, came in a distant third.

Mr. Markell, a former banker who was once a vice president at the telecommunications company Nextel, had a huge money advantage in the governor’s race, collecting $546,000 in the last weeks of the campaign, compared with $44,000 by Mr. Lee.

Now that Mr. Biden has won the vice presidency, Mr. Markell will name the person who will take Mr. Biden’s seat as Delaware’s new senator.

Delaware’s lone member of the House, Representative Michael N. Castle, a Republican who is a former governor, defeated his Democratic challenger, the children’s rights advocate Karen Hartley-Nagle.

Democrats took control of the 41-seat Delaware House, winning at least 24 seats and leading by a few dozen votes in two other races where the outcome remained uncertain. Democrats also retained control of the Delaware Senate.

SAM DILLON

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