MOSCOW, November 5 (RIA Novosti) — Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has grabbed an early lead and left his Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes behind in the race for Kentucky seat in the upper house of US Congress, CNN and Fox News said on Tuesday.
Fox News predicted that McConnell will win the race with 56 percent. With just 7 percent of ballots counted, he is ahead with 56 percent of the votes.
The Kentucky standoff in the run-up to the midterm elections was a heated one. Both contenders spent a total of some $100 million on their campaigns.
On Tuesday, Americans are voting in the midterm elections to elect 435 members of the House of Representatives, 36 senators, 36 governors and 46 state legislatures.
The vote will determine which of the two US political parties will take control of the Senate. Last October the US government went under shutdown for over two weeks because the Democratic Senate and the Republican House of Representatives could not agree on a bill to appropriate funds for 2014. According to Standard & Poor's estimate, the shutdown cost $24 billion to the American economy.
