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  In the end, it would not have mattered if John Kerry had insulted each member of the US military personally or if Saddam Hussein had been not merely convicted and sentenced to death but executed live on prime-time television on Sunday.

  The desire for a change of course in Washington was overwhelming and the fact that the Democrats were not especially clear about what they would do if they won was immaterial.

  A relatively short period in which the Republican Party had controlled the White House, Senate and House of Representatives for the first time since the 1920s is over.

  The scale of the likely Democratic majority in the House is such that even if a Republican succeeds George W. Bush in the Oval Office two years hence that person would probably find himself obliged to work with partisan opponents who control at least one chamber of Congress.

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  The era of divided government in the United States - the dominant feature of political life between Richard Nixon's victory in 1968 and the Republican recapture of the Senate in 2002 - has returned with a vengence. It is back to the future for both political parties.

  What happened? There was much speculation in advance that Republican-inclined electors living largely in America's suburbs would decline to cast their ballots, disillusioned by the President, shocked at sexual and financial scandals involving House Republicans and numbed by the aftermath of the Iraq war. That prediction does not seem to have been entirely accurate.

  An initial look at the voting statistics indicates that participation was not the issue. It was the willingness of previously Republican voters to enter the polling station and back the Democratic challenger that proved crucial. Turncoats (from a Republican perspective), not turnout decided these congressional elections.

  There was also a distinct and familiar geographical pattern to this outcome. Voters in the South and Western states were the most reluctant to abandon the Republicans.

  The Senate seats in Tennessee and Arizona remained in Republican hands while Virginia was very close despite Senator George Allen running a campaign that was stunningly inept.

  In the Northeast and Midwest, by contrast, Republicans were massacred. The incumbent Senators in Pennsylvania and Ohio were thrown out by brutal margins and their colleague in Rhode Island did not fare much better.

  Experienced House Republicans throughout the region were ejected in an unceremonious fashion. This alone would have been enough to produce a slim Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

  That the margin was larger was due to the deliberate recruitment of moderate, even conservative Democrats, to run in districts which Mr Bush won, often quite comfortably, in 2004. These were not candidates who could be demonised as liberal extremists.

  Their victory seems to have made the difference - and it is a very important one - between a Democratic House held by a 220-215 advantage and, as seems plausible now, one with a firmer edge closer to 230-205.

  Exactly what will happen in the Senate is a little ambiguous. The Democrats have plainly won four seats, appear to have won in Montana and have a tiny lead in Virginia which a recount and legal action might disrupt.

  The working assumption, nonetheless, is that it will be the Joe Lieberman Party which determines the fate of the Senate. It is an extraordinary turn of events for a man who was rejected by his own Democratic Party voters in a primary just three months ago and elected as an independent yesterday. Mr Lieberman is in a slightly awkward position as well as an astonishingly pivotal one.

  He is well aware that at least half, possibly a lot more than half, of those who voted for him in Connecticut were Republicans rather than Democrats.

  Mr Lieberman will back the Democrats in the ballot as to who controls the Senate and its committees but after that, especially on foreign and defence matters, he is likely to lean towards the Republicans.

  The Senate would thus be under Democratic administration but hardly under Democrat command. It is, for practical purposes, tied.

  What happens now? The mother of all recriminations on the Republican side of the aisle. Mr Bush's party will demand Donald Rumsfeld's head on a plate and will surely have it.

  The existing House leadership is likely to be purged and replaced by others with a fresh emphasis on fiscal conservatism.

  Change will be less dramatic in the Senate but there will be a struggle (dignified, of course, as this is the Upper House) over the composition and direction of the leadership.

  As for the Democrats, there are faced with the question articulated by Robert Redford after securing his Senate seat in the epic film The Candidate - what do they do now?

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