Democrats unseated Republican House incumbents Florida and Connecticut on Tuesday and jumped to leads over Republicans in more than a dozen other contests as they sought to pad their majority.

Ousting 22-year veteran Rep. Chris Shays in Connecticut gave Democrats every House seat from New England. And their victory in an open seat on New York’s Staten Island gave them control of all of New York City for the first time in 35 years.

Democrats held leads for a dozen and half Republican-held seats in the East and Midwest while Republicans had early edges over just a handful of Democrats.

“It’s the night we have been waiting for,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Republicans encountered early trouble in Florida, where Rep. Tom Feeney — under fire for ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff — was the first to fall at the hands of former state Rep. Suzanne Kosmas. Rep. Ric Keller of Florida lost to his Democratic challenger, attorney Alan Grayson, in an increasingly Hispanic district in Orlando.

Democrat Jim Himes, a Greenwich businessman, defeated Shays in a wealthy southwestern Connecticut district despite Shays’ highly publicized late criticism of Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign.

In New York, city councilman Mike McMahon won the race on Staten Island to succeed GOP Rep. Vito Fossella, who was forced to resign amid drunk driving charges and revelations that he fathered a child from an extramarital affair.

Democrats lost one seat when Republican attorney Tom Rooney defeated first-term Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Fla., who had admitted to two extramarital affairs just weeks before Election Day.

But other freshman Democrats once considered vulnerable cruised to easy re-election..

First-term Democratic Reps. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly and Brad Ellsworth, and New Hampshire’s Rep. Carol Shea-Porter won easy re-election. They were part of a crop of freshman Democrats in conservative-leaning districts who began compiling campaign war chests and moderate voting records almost from the moment they were elected two years ago, leaving only a few of them endangered on Tuesday.

Former five-term Republican Rep. Anne Northup was unable to mount a comeback in Louisville, Ky., against Yarmuth despite GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s decisive victory in the state.

It could be the first time in more than 75 years that Democrats would ride large waves of victory to bigger congressional margins in back-to-back elections.

“This will be a wave upon a wave,” Pelosi said.

In 2006, they won 30 seats and control of Congress in a surge powered by voter anger over the Iraq war.

This year the sour economy and public antipathy for President Bush posed the biggest challenges for Republican candidates. The Democrats were aided by a wave of GOP retirements and huge financial and organizational advantages over Republicans.

That’s despite voter hostility toward the Democratic-controlled Congress. Just one in five voters Tuesday approved of the job Congress was doing, about as poorly as Bush fared, according to AP exit polling.

Six in 10 voters cited the economy as the most important issue facing the nation. About half said the economy is poor and nearly all the rest said it’s not good. The results were based on a preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in Election Day polls and in telephone interviews over the past week for early voters.

Democrats now control the House by a 235-199 margin, with one vacancy.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the majority leader, breezed to re-election, as did Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the No. 4 Democrat.

GOP lawmakers at risk included Alaska’s Rep. Don Young, Colorado’s Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, and Michigan’s Reps. Tim Walberg and Joe Knollenberg. Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, once considered a safe bet for re-election, is also in major trouble.

In some of the first states to report, Rep. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who encountered trouble that few expected just weeks ago, easily won re-election. And Republicans held onto the Kentucky seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Ron Lewis, when Republican Brett Guthrie was elected

Republican Party strategists expected to lose several GOP-held seats left open by Republican retirements or departures, including in Arizona, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, and two each in New Mexico and New York.

A few Democrats faced challenges in the south. Reps. Nick Lampson of Texas, Nancy Boyda of Kansas, and Don Cazayoux of La., were behind in early returns.

In Pennsylvania, Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski faced a tough fight. Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., who chairs a subcommittee with the most influence on the Pentagon’s spending, was also in an unexpectedly tight race to keep the seat he’s held for 34 years, after calling his district south of Pittsburgh “racist.”

Democrats, who came out of their huge 2006 victory girding for losses this year, instead were able to aggressively spread their considerable wealth to campaigns around the country, including to traditionally Republican districts where their candidates normally wouldn’t have had a chance.

Republicans, meanwhile, were fighting on a playing field skewed by the departure of 29 of their members, leaving lesser-known GOP contenders to battle better-financed Democrats in races shaped in large part by antipathy toward Bush.

Both parties took in huge amounts of campaign cash in House races, although Democrats had a clear edge. Democratic candidates raised $436 million, compared with Republicans’ $328 million, according to federal data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The parties’ campaign committees also bankrolled the most competitive races, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pouring in $76 million and the National Republican Congressional Committee spending $24 million.

Because of hurricanes that delayed October primaries, the winners of two Louisiana seats — one that belonged to retiring Republican Rep. Jim McCrery and another now held by indicted Democratic Rep. William Jefferson — won’t be known until December. Those districts held primaries Tuesday.