Referendums: South Dakota voters decisively rejected the toughest abortion ban in the US, repealing a law that subjected doctors to five years in prison if they terminated a pregnancy for any reason except to prevent the mother's death.
Abortion rights supporters erupted in whoops and cheers as the returns scrolled across a television screen in their temporary headquarters at a hotel ballroom. They had relied on money and volunteers from across the US to defeat the ban - and said they hoped the vote would reverberate far beyond this sparsely populated, socially conservative state.
"People said we were crazy to put this on the ballot in South Dakota, but you know, we did it - and we won," Kate Looby, a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, said. "If you can't win an abortion ban in South Dakota, most states are going to be very hesitant to try this. We're not seen as a bastion of liberal thinking out here."
But supporters of the ban said the vote settled nothing - not nationally, and not in South Dakota. They fully intend, they said, to be back again next year, pressing the same cause.
Polls showed that many voters were uneasy that the law provided no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, or if the pregnancy was putting the mother's health at risk. (Even if the mother was dying, the law required physicians to do their utmost to save the foetus.)
Another closely watched ballot measure in South Dakota - a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage - passed, though the race was tight. Marriage bans were also passed easily in Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Colorado, Idaho and Wisconsin.
"This shows that people do turn out to uphold marriage," said Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokesman for the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, which supported the marriage amendments.
But in Arizona, voters rejected the gay marriage ban, making Arizona the first state to defeat a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage; 26 other states have passed it.
The amendments have been broadly worded to invalidate not only same-sex marriage, but also domestic partnerships. Opponents of the marriage ban argued that the broad wording would affect heterosexual couples as well as gay and lesbian couples; for instance, they warned voters that unmarried senior citizens living together could lose the right to visit each other in the hospital.
Five states passed increases in their minimum wage, while Arizona passed four measures targeting illegal immigrants, including one making English the state's official language.
Nationwide, a total of 205 measures were on the ballots in 37 states, but none had been watched as closely by political activists across the country as the South Dakota abortion measure. - (LA Times-Washington Post service, Reuters, AP)
Turnout: 40% went to vote
A preliminary analysis shows US voter turnout on Tuesday was about the same as the last midterm congressional election, at about 40 per cent, according to Curtis Gans, director of the non-partisan Centre for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington.
Mr Gans said turnout was up in some states and down in others. It was "spectacularly up" in Virginia - the second largest turnout for a midterm election - but down in Florida. It was also a major turnout success for Democrats. Mr Gans said Democrats drew more voters than Republicans for the first time in a midterm election since 1990. It was the first time that had happened in any national election since 1992, he said. - (AP)