S Senators Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island were headed for landslide election victories last night, according to unofficial returns.
With more than 75 percent of the vote counted in Connecticut, Lieberman was leading his Republican challenger, Mayor Philip Giordano of Waterbury, 65 to 34 percent, even though it was unclear whether Lieberman would return to the Senate or move to the vice president's mansion.
In two other key Connecticut races, one Democratic congressman, Representative Jim Maloney, was coasting to victory over Republican hopeful Mark Nielsen, while the dean of the state's US House delegation, Sam Gejdenson, a 10-term Democrat, was losing ground in a close race with Robert Simmons, a conservative Republican state representative. Simmons led 52-48 percent with more than 85 percent of the precincts counted.
In Rhode Island, Chafee, a Republican who was appointed to complete the term of his late father, John H. Chafee, was on his way to an easy victory in his first statewide election. Nearly final, unofficial returns showed Chafee beating Democratic US Representative John Weygand, 57 to 41 percent.
Chafee, whose only previous elected office was mayor of Warwick, had announced his candidacy shortly before his father died last fall after serving 23 years in the Senate.
As the campaign ended, Weygand, who risked his House seat on the race, said that the only reason he was trailing was voter sentiment for the elder Chafee, a popular moderate Republican respected for his bipartisanship.
In other Rhode Island races, voters were poised to give US Representative Patrick Kennedy a fourth term and to make Secretary of State James Langevin the first person who uses a wheelchair full-time to be elected to the House.
In the First District, Kennedy led Republican Stephen Cabral, a boiler operator from Tiverton who mounted only token opposition, 67 to 33 percent with 97 percent of the vote counted. In the Second District, Langevin, a Democrat, was beating the GOP candidate, Robert Tingle.
In Connecticut, Lieberman wore a lucky polka-dot tie to a voting booth in New Haven, where he voted for himself twice, once for reelection to a third term in the Senate and once for the vice presidency.
''That felt good,'' he said when he emerged.
After voting in Connecticut, Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate for vice president on a major party ticket, flew to Tennessee to join presidential nominee Al Gore and await election returns.
