WASHINGTON (AFP) – Polls began to close in the US midterm election Tuesday with President Barack Obama’s Republican enemies still on course to snatch control of the Senate and blight his last two years in office.

With voting over in some eastern states, the Republicans remained on course to win the six Senate seats they need to win a majority in both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2006.

Democrats — who were working feverishly to draw voters to the polls in a last-gasp effort to stave off disaster — could lose Senate seats in as many as 10 of the 36 states in play.

With no legislative base in Congress, Obama will struggle to pass legislation in the final stretch of his mandate, and his opponents will be able to thwart his appointments to judicial and official posts.

The party of an incumbent president historically fares badly in elections in his second term, and every president since Ronald Reagan has left office with the opposition controlling Congress.

The Republicans essentially based their campaigns on attacks against Obama and policies like his troubled health care reform.

Although the economy has improved gradually since the 2008 recession, the national mood is far from buoyant — a sentiment reflected in Tuesday exit polling.

Two-thirds of respondents said the country was on the wrong track, according to an ABC exit poll.

Meanwhile, a CNN exit poll showed 79 percent disapproved of Congress and less than one-third were satisfied with the Obama administration or with Republican leaders.

Recent economic gains have not translated into support in swing states with Democratic senators — such as Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado and Louisiana — which Republicans could now win.

“We’ve given the other side six years to have their way with things and it doesn’t seem to be working out too good, so I think it’s time to switch back to somebody else,” construction worker Charles Kaster told AFP outside a polling station in Berryville, Virginia.

– ‘Worst map’ for Democrats –

Acutely aware of how his low approval rating makes him a lightning rod, Obama acknowledged that this election cycle’s Senate map has made it the toughest uphill battle for his party in half a century.

“This is probably the worst possible group of states for Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower,” Obama told WNPR, a radio station in safely Democratic Connecticut.

Democrats hold a 55 to 45 seat advantage in the Senate. Republicans already control the House of Representatives and are expected to retain it.

“Victory is in the air, we’re going to bring it home tomorrow night!” an ebullient Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican and potential new Senate majority leader, told a crowd in Kentucky.

McConnell says Republicans would be “responsible” Senate leaders, even potentially cooperating with Obama on issues like tax reform.