Much of the spin leading up to Tuesday focused on the toxic anti-Republican atmosphere in Ohio -- and rightly so. Voters in the Buckeye State did indeed voice their displeasure with Republican leadership on Tuesday by sending incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine down to a 12-point defeat against Democrat Sherrod Brown, and also by choosing Democrat Ted Strickland for Governor over Republican Ken Blackwell by an overwhelming margin of more than 900,000 votes.

With such expectedly lopsided contests at the top of the ticket, it's a bit of surprise to see the results at the Congressional level. In addition to the open seat in the 18th district that was vacated by convicted felon Bob Ney, Republicans were very worried about the prospect of losing three other seats held by Reps. Steve Chabot, Jean Schmidt and especially Deborah Pryce.

If you look at a map of the House seats Republicans lost on Tuesday, however, Ohio stands as one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal evening. Just to the west, in Indiana, three closely watched and competitive races all resulted in the Republican incumbent being swept from office. And next door in the east it was equally bad: Republicans lost four out of five competitive House races in Pennsylvania -- including Melissa Hart in the fourth district sitting right on the border with Ohio.

Despite all of this, the three endangered Republican incumbents in Ohio managed to survive. In Ohio 1, Steve Chabot beat John Cranley with relative ease, 51-46. In the heavily Republican second district, Jean Schmidt squeaked by her opponent by a mere 2,300 votes.

Most impressive of all was the survival of Deborah Pryce, number four in the House Republican leadership. The seven-term Congresswoman representing a marginally Republican district in and around Columbus was targeted early by the DCCC and withstood a withering assault this cycle but still came out on top by 3,536 votes on Tuesday.

All three Republicans are no doubt thankful to have survived this year, though the Congress they will return to will look a lot different than the one they remember.