PROVIDENCE, R.I., Nov. 6 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama won Rhode Island's four electoral votes, while Democrats retained a U.S. Senate seat and won a hard-fought fight for a House seat.
Obama carried 63 percent of the vote in the Ocean State, compared with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's 35 percent, with almost all votes counted.
Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson collected 1 percent, while Green Party nominee Jill Stein, a Massachusetts physician, picked up 0.5 percent.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse coasted to a second term. He was ahead of Republican challenger B. Barrett Hinckley, 65 percent to 35 percent, with almost all votes counted. Hinckley is a software executive.
Democratic Rep. David Cicilline easily prevailed over Republican challenger Brendan P. Doherty, capping a hard-fought, bitter and costly campaign for one of the small but densely populated state's two House seats.
He captured 53 percent of the vote to Doherty's 41 percent. Independent candidate David S. Vogel garnered 6 percent of the vote.
"The fight that you saw in this campaign is the same fight that I will bring to Washington ... to get people back to work, to rebuild our economy," the Providence Journal quoted Cicilline as saying in his victory speech.
Cicilline served as Providence mayor from 2003 to 2011 and was the first openly gay mayor of a U.S. state capital. Doherty was a state police colonel and superintendent of the state Department of Public Safety.
