US President Barack Obama will stick to his agenda including healthcare reforms despite shock defeat in a Massachusetts Senate election, the White House says.
Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod said there would be a rethink on tactics but the substance of policy would not change.
Earlier Republican Scott Brown, who won the seat, said he had tapped into mounting aggravation among voters.
Mr Brown will be Massachusetts' first Republican senator since 1972.
"We'll have to think through this next year from the standpoint of tactics but in substance the mission can't change," Mr Axelrod said.
The result stunned Democrats and means Republicans now have enough Senate votes to impede the president's plans.
The BBC's Paul Adams, in Boston, says it is a humiliating defeat for the Democrats, and a deeply unwelcome anniversary present for President Obama exactly one year after his inauguration.
He adds that it is one of the biggest political upsets in years - in a seat held for almost half a century by Edward Kennedy, a Democratic Party colossus, who died last year.
Senate Democrats are expected to meet at midday local time (1700 GMT) to decide what to do about Mr Obama's flagship healthcare legislation.
'Voter disenchantment'
Senator-elect Brown told NBC's Today show he did not think the vote was a referendum on President Obama's first year in power.
He said it was a sign of voter disenchantment over partisan gridlock in Washington.
Mr Brown, 50, also said voters had "enjoyed the message" he pushed while campaigning, including his criticism of Mr Obama's healthcare plans.
"I just focused on what I did, which is to talk about the issues - terror, taxes and the healthcare plan," he told NBC.
"We already have 98% of our people insured here already in Massachusetts, so we do not need the plan that's being pushed upon us," he added.
"We would have lesser care, longer lines and pay higher taxes and it makes no sense."
But he denied he was intent on derailing the reforms.
"I never said I was going to do everything I can to stop healthcare," he said.
"I believe everybody should have healthcare, it's just a question of how we do it."
'Senator Beefcake'
The Republican beat Democratic rival and Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley by 52% to 47%.
Dubbed Senator Beefcake in the US media, Mr Brown is a lawyer and former model who posed almost naked for Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1980s while in law school.
The Republican former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, told Fox News the vote was a referendum on President Obama, and a verdict on "an arrogant approach to politics in this country".
The party's chairman, Michael Steele, said Americans were breathing a "sign of relief" over healthcare.
"People across the country are saying: 'Slow it down,'" he said, quoted by the Associated Press.
The Republican win has robbed the Democrats of their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate.
After conceding the election in a telephone call to Mr Brown, Ms Coakley told her supporters she was "heartbroken at the result".
Sen Robert Menendez, head of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee, said he had "no interest in sugar-coating" the result.
"There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now," he added. "Americans are understandably impatient."
The US ambassador to the UK, Louis Susman, a senior Democrat, told the BBC: "I think the healthcare bill has been totally misrepresented.
"I think that the Democratic candidate may not have presented as well as we would have liked."
Lacklustre
President Obama had campaigned personally on behalf of Ms Coakley.
Analysts say the race should have been an easy win for her. Just weeks ago, she had a double-digit lead in polls and seemed destined to win.
But a lacklustre campaign allowed her Republican opponent to seize on voter discontent and overtake her in the final stretch.
Voters flocked to the polls through the snow and rain that fell all day on Tuesday.
Ms Coakley said she had received a telephone call from President Obama, who told her: "We can't win them all."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president had called to congratulate Mr Brown and say he was looking forward to working with him.
Correspondents say the vote does not bode well for the Democrats ahead of November's congressional elections, and that if they cannot hang on to a party stronghold such as Massachusetts they could be vulnerable almost anywhere.
The result comes amid opinion polls showing nearly half of Americans think President Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises.
It was the third major loss for Democrats in state-wide elections since he became president: Republicans won governors' seats in Virginia and New Jersey in November.
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