A senior election official in Georgia said he was almost certain that Jon Ossoff, the 33-year-old media executive who launched an unlikely challenge to an incumbent senator, will emerge as the winner against David Perdue.
“The senator is likely to be Ossoff,” said Gabriel Sterling, a senior election official in Georgia, at a news conference on Wednesday morning.
In his briefing, Sterling said Ossoff’s victory was also likely to exceed the margin – ½ of 1 percent – that would trigger a recount in the Georgia elections.
Ossoff currently leads Perdue by more than 17,500 votes after the Senate’s second round on Tuesday, in which more than 4.4 million voters voted, a record in Georgia.
Just over 60,000 votes remain to be counted, with the highest count coming from Democratic or Democratic counties in the Atlanta metropolitan area. These include DeKalb (17,902 votes); Henry (9,078); Fulton (5,294); and Gwinnett (5,068).
The remaining votes are largely absent votes that were delivered by post or placed in boxes during Tuesday’s day, according to Sterling, who said he expected most of them to be counted by 1 pm.
During the briefing, Mr. Sterling, a former Republican political operative, said there was no evidence of irregularities in the Senate election and, again, expressed frustration with President Trump, whom he accused of unleashing a “war within a Republican Party that needed to be united to go through a tough fight like this. ”