WASHINGTON – Democrats closed in on keeping their majority in the Senate, swiping Republican-held Senate seats in Indiana and Massachusetts on Tuesday and keeping a once vulnerable seat in Missouri.

Republican candidates’ clumsy comments on rape and abortion proved to be the party’s undoing in two of the races. The Democratic gains meant the GOP had to run the table in remaining open Senate seats in Virginia, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Nebraska and New Mexico, but they trailed in three.

Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly edged out tea party-backed Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in a race rocked by the Republican candidate’s awkward remark that pregnancy resulting from rape is “something God intended.”