Georgia goes to poll with Senate control at stake
A sign is seen as voters line up for the US Senate run-off election, at a polling location in Marietta, Georgia, US on Tuesday.
Control of the United States Senate was on the line in a pair of run-off elections in Georgia on Tuesday after a dizzying campaign that shattered spending and early turnout records.
Incumbent Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are trying to hold off Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, and the Reverend Raphael Warnock, a pastor at a historic Black church in Atlanta, in a state Biden narrowly carried in the presidential election.
The tumultuous contest’s final days have been dominated by President Donald Trump’s continued effort to subvert the election results.
On Saturday, he pressured the state’s Republican secretary of state to reverse Biden’s statewide victory, claiming massive fraud contrary to evidence.
Illustrating the high stakes, both Trump and Biden campaigned in Georgia on Monday, Trump in the state’s northwest and Biden in Atlanta.
The president called the November 3 election “rigged” and falsely claimed he won the state on Monday, as he used his speech to air grievances about his defeat. “There is no way we lost Georgia,” Trump said, ticking off a long list of unfounded conspiracy theories about election fraud.
Biden’s November win, the first for a Democratic presidential candidate in Georgia in nearly 30 years, was not confirmed for more than a week, and subsequent legal challenges from the Trump campaign pushed the state’s final certification into December.
Some Republicans have expressed concern that Trump’s baseless attacks may suppress turnout among his supporters. However, 50 Trump-supporting voters interviewed last month said they planned to vote despite his claims.
A double Democratic win would split the Senate 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote giving Democrats control of the Senate. The party already holds a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
A Republican-controlled Senate would likely block many of Biden’s most ambitious policy goals in areas such as economic relief, climate change and policing.
“This is not an exaggeration: Georgia, the whole nation is looking to you,” Biden told Monday’s rally. “One state can chart the course, not just for the next four years, but for the next generation.”
Polls are open until 7pm local time. Some 3 million ballots have already been cast in early in-person and mail voting, mirroring a trend seen in November due to COVID-19.
Barring an unexpectedly lopsided result, the winners are unlikely to be known perhaps for days, as state officials are not permitted to start tallying early votes until after the polls close.
Opinion surveys have shown both races are exceedingly tight. Nearly half a billion dollars in advertising has blanketed the state’s airwaves, as dozens of independent political groups have descended on Georgia.
Democrats had been encouraged by the early vote, which included strong figures from Black voters, seen as crucial to their chances. But Republicans have historically turned out in higher numbers on Election Day.
Perdue and Loeffler have tried to strike a careful balancing act, offering support for Trump’s rigged election claims while still arguing they represent the last barrier to an era of unrestrained liberalism in Washington.
