The reverberations of Election Day are being felt on a national scale and the local level.

After winning both houses of Congress two years ago, Democrats retained control on Tuesday, gaining seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

In New Hampshire, the Democratic Party — which in 2006 won a majority in both the N.H. House and Senate for the first time since 1874 — will have the same advantage for a second term.

And following an election in which “change” was a common theme, members of the state Republican Party are considering what changes they need to make to swing the momentum back in their favor.

“The wind was at the Democrats’ backs all year,” Fergus Cullen, chairman of the N.H. Republican Party, said Wednesday. “I feel confident that we as Republicans in New Hampshire gave it everything we had. There’s nothing we could’ve done differently that would have led to a different result.”

Cullen said Republicans around the country and in New Hampshire will now begin to talk about the future.

“One part of that discussion is going to be whether we repudiate the big-government conservatism that was the hallmark of the Bush administration,” Cullen said.

Among Tuesday’s results, former N.H. governor Jeanne Shaheen defeated Republican incumbent Sen. John E. Sununu by seven points in a rematch that six years ago saw Sununu victorious.

Democratic Reps. Paul W. Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter won two more years in the U.S. House, triumphs for a man who in 2006 unseated a six-term congressman, and a little-known woman who two years ago had been given little chance of winning.

On the state level, however, Cullen said he was proud that Republicans were able to gain seats in the House while not losing any more ground in the Senate.

House officials from both parties expect Democrats will have roughly 222 seats — give or take a seat or two once final tallies are confirmed, according to the Associated Press — while Republicans picked up a handful of seats from the 159 they had in the 400-member chamber over the past two years.

In the Senate, Democrats outnumber Republicans, 14-10.

In the 31 Monadnock Region communities, Republicans gained one seat in the N.H. House, bringing their local ranks to six. All five local N.H. Senate incumbents, three of whom were Republicans, two Democrats, retained their seats.

“It’s just a historic election, and if you look at the trends over the last dozen years, it’s not an unexpected result,” Raymond Buckley, chairman of the N.H. Democratic Party, said Wednesday.

“Gov. Shaheen’s victory in 1996, along with President Clinton carrying the state in his re-election bid, really set the tone for the last 12 years,” Buckley said. “It really has been a steady increase in the Democratic Party registration.”

Daniel A. Eaton, a Stoddard Democrat, majority floor leader of the House and chairman of the Cheshire County Democrats, also pointed to discontent with President George W. Bush as another reason for his party’s success.

“2006 was a tsunami. This was just a high wave,” Eaton said. “Now that we no longer have straight-ticket voting, I think this is a truer show of what the electorate is. Voters actually went back and forth, picking candidates across the board.”

Tuesday’s results left area Republicans disappointed, Juliana T. Bergeron, chairwoman of the Cheshire County Republican Committee, said as Election Day wound to a close.

“The pendulum has swung further than we thought it was going to,” Bergeron said. “I believe in the party system. If this is what the people want, we’ll try this for a little while.”

But local Republicans said they were concerned by the potential for same-day voter registration in New Hampshire to sway elections.

“New Hampshire has an extremely broad definition of what qualifies someone to legally vote within our state,” said James Romeyn Davis, a local lawyer who worked for the Republican Party on Tuesday to observe and, potentially, challenge same-day voter registrants.

“I think the definition is too broad and allows someone with absolutely no connection to or interest in our state to vote in it,” Davis said. “When people show up to vote and they cannot produce an in-state ID and are claiming they’ve had residency for months or over a year, it goes to show the foolishness of same-day registration.

“It’s an invitation for fraud.”

Observers, who are appointed by both political parties, were at all five Keene wards Tuesday, according to City Clerk Patricia A. Little.

While same-day registrants are signing up to vote, observers from either party can challenge the registration if they have concerns about the person’s eligibility.

They complete a form and submit it to the election monitor, who makes the final call on a potential voter’s eligibility to register in a particular ward, Little said.

Davis spent Election Day in Keene’s Ward 1, where students who live on campus at Keene State College vote.

Of the 18,420 people now on Keene’s voter checklist, 2,808 registered to vote Tuesday, including 1,220 in Ward 1.

Davis said New Hampshire should either do away with same-day registration or move state elections to odd years to keep any large new voter turnout for major races from having an effect on those local races lower on the ballot.

“Let’s let the people who actually live with the results have a say,” Davis said.

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