 Periods of a high degree of party-switching (among both elected officials and citizens) are linked to periods of partisan realignment.After the 1994 elections (in which Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in four decades), five House Democrats and two Senate Democrats switched to the Republicans.Another notable switch took place in 2001 when Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont defected from the Republican Party to become a political independent, which placed the Senate in Democratic control.