Just a day before two decisive elections in Georgia decide which party will control the US Senate, the bookmakers’ chances suggest that disputes are extremely heated.
The two Senate seats in Georgia are on the ballots on Tuesday, after none of the incumbents, the Republicans Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler managed to get more than 50% of the vote in the November election.
The Democratic Party needs to win both seats in Georgia, which President-elect Joe Biden narrowly won in the 2020 election, to gain control of the Senate.
If one or both Perdue and Loeffler manage to keep their seats, Republicans will have a narrow majority in the upper house and make it difficult for the Biden government to move forward on its legislative agenda for at least two years.
But a victory by Democratic opponents Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would equally divide the Senate 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris able to cast the necessary tiebreakers.
But while polls show Democratic candidates ahead of their Republican opponents, betting odds show that bookmakers believe the Republican Party is a little more likely to retain control of the Senate.
Oddschecker, who aggregates betting data from dozens of bookmakers, shows that Warnock is more likely to prevail in the state’s special election contest against Loeffler.
Warnock’s odds are 4-7, implying a 63.69 percent chance, while Loeffler’s win is rated at 13-10, with an implied probability of 43.48 percent.
The odds indicate that the race between Perdue and Ossoff is much more fierce.
The betting site has a 11-13 win loss, with an implied probability of 54.05 percent. Ossoff is priced at 4-5, which means a slightly higher probability of 55%.
And when it comes to which party will eventually gain control of the Senate, Oddschecker has the Republican Party at 5-6, which implies a 54.64% probability. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party was priced at 1 to 1 to gain control of the Senate, which implies a 50 percent chance.
According to the FiveThirtyEight average of direct polls in Georgia, Ossoff and Warnock are ahead of Loeffler and Perdue by about two percentage points each, with only a few hours to go before the polls open.
On the weighted average, Ossoff has the support of 49.2% of Georgia voters, while Perdue has the support of 47.4%. In comparison, Warnock is supported by 49.5% of voters, while Loeffler is supported by 47.2%.
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that President Donald Trump has pressured Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to overturn the outcome of the state’s 2020 elections.
In a recording of a Saturday call posted by The Washington Post, Trump told Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” and made baseless claims about electoral fraud in Georgia.
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