Democrats are well-positioned, according to early voting data and sparse polling, but Republicans could win with strong Election Day turnout.
The most tightly divided state in the nation will decide on Tuesday which party controls the Senate — and in true 2020 fashion, we might not know who won on election night.
All signs point to a photo finish in Georgia’s twin Senate runoffs, two months after President-elect Joe Biden carried the state by two-tenths of a percentage point. The limited polling slightly favors Democrats, but most surveys are well inside the margin of error. The early vote has favored Democrats too, but November’s elections demonstrated how strong GOP voting on Election Day can quickly match or erase those advantages.
If Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win both Georgia races — the regular election for a six-year term and a special election for two years in the Senate — they will achieve a 50-50 tie in the chamber and flip the majority once Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is sworn in for her tiebreaking role.
In another sign of the bizarre and unusual in these campaigns, one of the Republican incumbents, David Perdue, actually saw his first Senate term expire on Sunday before voters decide whether to extend his tour in Washington in this overtime race. Appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler is the other Republican on the ballot, with the GOP needing one win to maintain control of the Senate.
After more than 3 million early votes, a half-billion dollars in non-stop television ads and 11th-hour visits from both the outgoing and incoming presidents, here’s where the dramatic last act of the 2020 election stands.
Most of the prominent national polling firms are sitting out the Georgia runoffs, which are coming two months after an election in which the polls again underestimated Trump and Republicans down the ballot.
