According to NBC News, both Senate elections in Georgia were too close as polls closed Tuesday night.
The races will determine which party controls the Senate for the next two years. Democrats strive for unified control over Congress and the White House. Republicans want a check against President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda.
In one match, 71-year-old Republican David Perdue takes on 33-year-old Democrat Jon Ossoff, who runs a documentary production company. Perdue is seeking a second term in the Senate after his first end on Sunday.
In the other special elections, 50-year-old Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler meets 51-year-old Democrat Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. preached. The seat, which opened after former GOP senator Johnny Isakson’s early retirement, will be re-eligible in 2022.
Both elections were held after the election after no candidate had collected more than 50% of the vote in the general election.
Provinces have started reporting results, and reports from some small provinces have already been completed. Cobb County in the Atlanta metro area said it will not finalize tonight’s results and resume ballots at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
A sign is seen as voters lining up for the second election to the United States Senate, at a polling station in Marietta, Georgia, US, on January 5, 2021.
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Biden won Georgia in November with 11,779 votes. NBC News mentioned his victory over President Donald Trump in Peach State only three days after election day, when officials added up the post-in ballots.
More than 3 million Georgians voted before Tuesday, marking a historically high turnout for a second election in the state. Scaling electoral data and voter history data suggests that the Democrats had an advantage in the early turnout. Republicans hoped for a strong performance on Tuesday.
According to the Georgia secretary of state, the average wait time at polling stations through Tuesday has fluctuated around a minute statewide. The top Republican election official, Gabriel Sterling, said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon that the turnout on election day could range from about 600,000 to 1.1 million voters. Exact numbers are difficult to predict before the ballots are counted.
Several neighborhoods closed later than 7 p.m. ET due to delays earlier in the day. The latest was a polling station in Lowndes County that closed at 8 p.m. ET, according to the Georgia Democratic Party. Voters who lined up before the polls closed were legally allowed to vote.
According to data from the impartial Center for Responsive Politics, the two run-offs in Georgia are the two most expensive senate games ever.
If even one of the Republicans wins, the GOP will retain control of the Senate. Democrats must swipe both races to achieve a 50-50 split in the room. The elected vice president Kamala Harris would then hold a draw.
The election results will determine the first two years of Biden’s agenda. If Republicans keep the Senate, they will push for a smaller coronavirus aid package than Democrats hope to pass in the coming months. At a rally on Monday, Biden and Democratic Senate candidates stressed that victories in Georgia could help them pay the $ 2,000 direct aid payments – a plan Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Is in itself against.
A democratic senate would also give Biden a better chance of meeting his economic recovery agenda and confirming his elected cabinet nominees and judges. Only a majority is required for confirmation, while most legislation requires 60 votes.
During the runoffs, Perdue and Loeffler appealed to Trump’s loyal supporters, including by backing the outgoing president’s baseless claims about widespread voter fraud. In a climax days before the election, Trump threatened Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger via phone call to find votes that would nullify Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Loeffler said in a statement Monday that she would oppose the certification of the electoral college’s results on Wednesday. The maneuver is expected to fail.
Some GOP strategists were concerned that Trump’s ongoing attacks on the integrity of the election in Georgia could discourage some Republicans from voting Tuesday.
This story develops. Please check again for updates.
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