THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY has won back a Senate seat traditionally seen as one of its safest – the seat in Massachusetts formerly held by Ted Kenendy.

NBC News has called the Senate election for Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor, ousting Scott Brown who had taken the seat in a surprise coup in the 2010 special election.

Kennedy had held the seat for 47 years, and Scott’s victory in a special election after Kennedy’s 2009 death was seen as a stern rebuke to the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, 32-year-old Joe Kennedy – a great-nephew of Ted and John F Kennedy, and a grandson of former senator Robert F Kennedy – has been elected to the House of Representatives.

Ted Kennedy’s death in 2009, and the retirement of his son Patrick from his Congressional seat in Rhode Island last year, had left the US Congress without a member of the Kennedy family for the first time in over six decades.

Read: Republicans will keep control of US House of Representatives

As it happens: Liveblog: US Election 2012

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