Georgia Senate second round results: Jon Ossoff defeats David Perdue

Democrat Jon Ossoff won a seat in the Georgia Senate, defeating Republican David Perdue in one of the state’s top qualifiers on Tuesday.

The race was called by the Vox electoral partner’s Decision Bureau at 2:14 am Eastern Time.

Ossoff is the second Democrat from Georgia to win in the second round of the January 5 election. Democratic Reverend Raphael Warnock also won his race on Tuesday night, by telephone from the Decision Table of Vox’s electoral partner. Crucially, Ossoff’s victory means that Democrats have now won the two seats needed to regain control of the Senate.

Ossoff is a former investigative journalist who ran for Congress in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District in 2017, narrowly losing for Republican Karen Handel in a runoff. Few election experts in Georgia predicted that he would beat Perdue, as the Democrat fell about 88,000 votes behind Perdue in November. Ossoff’s victory two months later suggests greater enthusiasm for Democratic candidates and less enthusiasm for Republicans.

Ossoff and Warnock’s victories come after President-elect Joe Biden was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992. House Democrats also changed their only district governed by the 2020 Republican Party in Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District, in the suburbs from Atlanta.

These big victories for Democrats mean a shift in Georgia’s diverse constituency.

“The state is becoming younger and more diverse by the day,” Ossoff told Vox in an interview this fall. “Investment in democratic infrastructure over the past decade has been huge.”

Ossoff’s victory is also a firm rebuke to President Donald Trump in a Senate race that the outgoing president largely made on him and his November defeat in Georgia. Ossoff’s Republican opponent Perdue was one of Trump’s first Senate allies and a staunch supporter of the president after the November 3 election. Perdue and other Republican senator Kelly Loeffler supported Trump in his battle against Georgia’s Republican state officials, counting on the support of the president in the state to lead them to victory.

That support ultimately did not materialize.

What Ossoff’s victory means for Senate control and Biden’s agenda

Joe Biden may have won the presidency on November 3, but he has little chance of meeting the bold agenda he proposed without Congressional membership.

Biden is taking office in the face of several crises: the Covid-19 pandemic is worsening in the United States, even though vaccines are starting to be distributed across the country, and there are still millions of unemployed due to coronavirus-related layoffs. After months of party stalemate, Congress was able to approve a $ 900 billion economic aid package before the new year. Biden said he wants more economic stimulus, but whether a future package can be approved will be largely determined by which party controls the Senate.

“The power is literally in your hands. Unlike any time in my career, a state can set the course – not just for the next four years, but for the next generation, ”said Biden at a rally on Monday in support of Ossoff and Warnock.

Even with this victory, Democrats will have to fight the Senate Republicans. Securing the two seats in Georgia gives Democrats 50 seats in the Senate, in addition to elected vice president Kamala Harris serving as a crucial tiebreaker for simple majority votes. The problem is that most bills need an absolute majority of 60 votes in the Senate. So even if Democrats have control of the Senate, they will generally need about 10 Republican votes to get things done.

Passing Democratic bills will be extremely difficult in a 50-50 Senate. It will even be difficult to pass broad bipartisan bills. But winning Georgia’s seats is the only thing that ensures that Democrats – instead of McConnell – have a say in what bills will get to the Senate for debate. It would also give them the ability to more easily confirm the choices of the Biden Office or its nominees to the federal judiciary and the United States Supreme Court.

Ossoff’s victory in Georgia ensures that Democrats can at least count on a Senate majority.