Georgia’s run-off elections on Tuesday are high-risk disputes that will determine which party controls the Senate and set the agenda for the new administration in Washington.
Two Republican candidates, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are struggling to maintain their seats. If their Democratic opponents, Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, win, Democrats will claim a majority in the Senate.
Senate control will effectively define the parameters of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first two-year term. A Senate led by Republicans would complicate his ability to form his cabinet, pass laws and direct his political priorities.
Here’s a look at what we know about the two runoff runs before election day.
How did Democrats and Republicans fare in early voting?
Three million people have already voted in runoff contests, almost 40% of all registered voters in the state, according to data compiled by the University of Florida’s US Elections Project. This total exceeds the 2.1 million votes obtained in the last second round of the state in the Senate, which occurred in 2008.
Initial voting data suggests that races are very competitive. There are some indications that Democrats had a larger share of the electorate with early voting than in the general election, raising hopes for a party that traditionally has been oppressed in run-off races. The Atlanta area, the Democratic political base, had one of the highest turnout rates in the state’s first votes.
The outcome now depends on whether Republicans will be able to overcome Democrats’ initial gains when they go to the polls on Tuesday. Early voting rates were the lowest in the northwest conservative corner of the state, worrying some Republicans. But others argue that his supporters typically vote in higher numbers on election day and hope that President Trump’s rally on Monday in Dalton, a northwestern city, will bring more Republicans to the polls.
The Democrats’ early vote advantage helped them defeat Trump in the November election, when Biden won nearly 400,000 more ballots in the state.
When are the voting deadlines?
For those planning to vote in person on Election Day on Tuesday, polling stations open at 7 am Eastern time and close at 7 pm. Anyone in the queue at 7pm can stay in the queue to vote.
Absentee ballots must be received in the mail or placed in a deposit box by 7pm Tuesday to be counted. (Democrats warned voters on Monday not to send ballots at this time, but to put them in collection boxes.) Military and foreign ballots are due by Tuesday.
What should we expect on election day?
Strategists on both sides remain uncertain as to what to expect beyond a close dispute. Demographic changes have changed politics in Georgia, turning the traditionally conservative southern state into a heavily contested battleground.
In November, Perdue received 49.7% of the vote, just below the majority he would need to avoid a runoff, while his opponent, Ossoff, had 47.9% – a difference of about 88,000 votes. The field was more crowded in the other Senate race: Warnock finished with 32.9 percent of the vote and Loeffler with 25.9 percent.
Modeling the electorate for these rematches is not easy: a second round of Georgia has never determined the balance of power in the Senate – or was kept in the middle of a pandemic.
Both parties expect attendance to be significantly higher than in the second round of the 2008 Senate, although few analysts predict figures close to the five million voters in Georgia who voted in the November general election.
At this point in the race, total participation is 23% lower than in the November election, according to state data compiled by Ryan Anderson, a data analyst in Atlanta. About 1.2 million people who voted at the start of the general election have yet to vote in the second round.
When will we know the results?
The Georgia State Electoral Council has extended some emergency provisions since the November election, such as keeping boxes suspended for absentee votes. Some of the rules have been tweaked to encourage a faster count, which would allow winners to be seated earlier. The new Congress was already installed on Sunday.
Counties were required to examine and process the ballots at least a week before the election, although they cannot begin to count or tabulate them until the polls close on Tuesday. These new rules can lead to faster results, although in a close contest most Georgians (and everyone else) can go to sleep before the media have enough results to declare a winner.
In November, it took a week and a half to count after election day to make it clear that Biden had won the state.
Republicans are expected to have an early lead on election night, because the most conservative areas of the state tend to report results more quickly and because the personally cast votes that favored Republicans during the pandemic are often released earlier. Heavily Democratic counties, including the suburban areas of Atlanta that helped Biden win, have historically taken longer to count the votes.
And yes, there may be another round of counting. According to Georgia law, if the margin separating candidates is within half a percentage point, the defeated candidate can request a recount in which election officials would again scan the ballots.
After multiple vote counts last year, state officials are preparing for all contingencies. Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said the requirement for a complete recount – like the one held in November – does not apply to run-off elections.
How are the parties strategizing?
Second round races have traditionally been sleepy contests, with less attendance, which has favored Republicans because of the downturn among Democrats, especially black voters, after the general election. (The second rounds themselves were planned by white Georgians in the 1960s to dilute the power of black voters.)
Not this year. An impressive influx of political spending flooded the state, as campaign agents, party officials and outside groups participated in the races. Nearly $ 500 million was spent on advertising, according to Ad Impact, an advertising tracking company, saturating radio waves to levels never seen before.
Democrats have been working to keep attendance high, stepping up their outreach efforts, targeting color voters with focused advertising campaigns and sending a flotilla of high-voltage political stars to the state. As Trump prepared for his rally Monday night, Biden campaigned for Democrats in Atlanta in the afternoon.
An effort to reach new voters, led by Stacey Abrams, has prompted some 800,000 residents to register to vote in this election cycle – a wave that electoral mobilization groups have been trying to build since November. Some Democrats and voting rights organizations raised concerns about access to polling places and possible suppression.
Democratic efforts may be working: data from the initial polls show that almost 31% of voters who voted are black, up about three percentage points from their participation in the general election.
Republicans believe that some voters who supported Biden will want checks on Democratic power in Washington. But his efforts were complicated by Trump’s refusal to stop litigating the previous contest.
The release of an audio recording of a phone call in which Trump pressured Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the election results has altered runoff runs in recent days.
Some Republican strategists fear that Trump’s attacks on the results of the presidential election will complicate his efforts to win back some of the moderate suburban voters who fled his party in November.
A marginal group of conservatives is also encouraging Republicans to boycott the election to support Trump’s baseless allegations of fraudulent vote counting, which could erode the margins of the two presidents.