Live Updates
Our live coverage of the Georgia Senate runoff elections has ended. You can read more about the results here.
Democrat Jon Ossoff will win his Senate race in Georgia, CNN projects.
His win means Democrats will have control of the Senate. With Ossoff and Raphael Warnock’s wins over Georgia’s two incumbent GOP senators, there will be a 50-50 split in the Senate.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, also a Democrat, will cast any tie-breaking votes.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reports. Watch:
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Gabriel Sterling, and other staffers from their office have been relocated from the Georgia State Capitol building for security reasons, Sterling told CNN.
Sterling, the state’s voting implementation manager, said Raffensperger and some of his staff were escorted from their offices with their usual security detail at around 1:30 p.m. ET “out of an abundance of caution.”
Sterling said that this was not a reaction to the breach at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, but rather a proactive move.
“We were watching the President double down and quadruple down, so we thought it was better to remove ourselves from the situation rather than inflame the situation,” Sterling told CNN.
A small group of “Stop the Steal” protesters and supporters of President Trump have gathered in front of the Georgia State Capitol. Some of the protesters were armed with long guns, according to CNN Producer Jason Morris.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office at the State Capitol is now closed for the day. There is a heavy law enforcement presence inside and outside of the Capitol.
Gwinnett County election workers have begun scanning the roughly 5,000 absentee votes outstanding into the system.
They began at 1p.m. ET, expect to be finished by 5 p.m. ET and would soon thereafter push those numbers to the Secretary of State’s election results website, Gwinnett County public information officer Joe Sorenson told CNN. But depending on how many absentee ballots need to be adjudicated, that number could be lower.
The ballots are batched into 50 or 100 ballots. If one or more of those ballots needs to be adjudicated, the whole batch will be pulled. They are hoping to have adjudication panels come in this afternoon to handle the small amount of ballots they anticipate will need adjudication, but if they are not able to, then the batches pulled will not be included in the end of day count.
Sorenson told CNN he does not expect the number of ballots needing adjudication to be very high as the ballot only included three races. It leaves a smaller chance of voters making mistakes on their ballots. For example, if 10 ballots in 10 separate batches need adjudication, that could leave as many as 1,000 ballots from being included in the end-of-day count.
A reminder: Adjudication panels include one Democrat, one Republican and a neutral third-party that all must agree on the voter’s intent to cast their ballot for one candidate or another when a mistake has been on the ballot and is rejected by the scanner.
Republicans are not tipping their hands this morning on how Sen. David Perdue will respond if the final count shows him trailing Jon Ossoff inside the margin of .5%, which would allow him to ask for a recount.
Remember: While Ossoff is leading Perdue, the race is still too close to call, and CNN has not yet projected a winner.
There are no automatic recounts in Georgia, a trailing candidate must ask for one.
The Perdue campaign did not respond to a request from CNN about their plans this morning, but in a statement last night promised their supporters that they would exhaust “every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots will be properly counted.”
One GOP source involved in the race told CNN that they “simply have no idea” how Perdue will respond when presented with the option of a recount.
It is important to point out that while there are still votes to be counted, Ossoff’s lead over Perdue is greater than the margin Biden beat Trump by in the general election. That margin was confirmed by three different recounts.
Democrats are moving closer to winning control of the Senate as Jon Ossoff continues to lead GOP incumbent Sen. David Perdue. The race is still too close to call, but Ossoff’s lead has continued as more votes are counted.
CNN already projected that Democrat Raphael Warnock will win the special Senate runoff election against GOP Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler.
If Ossoff wins his race, there will be a 50-50 split and control of the Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris acting as the tie-breaker.
Moments ago, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer congratulated Warnock and Ossoff, saying that “one of the first things” he wants to do as Senate Majority Leader is pass $2,000 stimulus checks.
Remember: CNN has not called the race between Ossoff and Perdue.
GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a staunch Trump ally, said he doesn’t think President Trump’s message to voters – saying that the election was rigged – was “very helpful” for Republicans in the Georgia Senate races.
“It’s a good question, I don’t know the answer, necessarily, whether it was helpful or not. He was gonna get blamed either way,” he said, when asked if Trump’s message that the election was was rigged was helpful to turn out voters.
Cramer continued,
“I personally don’t think it was very helpful. I think it’s the numbers sort of demonstrate that in certain areas where, you know, interestingly during the election in November, Senator Perdue outperformed the president in several places. .. And this time around several people didn’t come out to vote.”
More than 1 million absentee-by-mail votes have been counted in Georgia, election official Gabriel Sterling said in a press briefing.
He also provided details on the number of absentee ballots that have been checked in but not yet scanned and uploaded as results as of 10 a.m. ET.
“Counties are still putting stuff in, they’re also scanning. So these numbers will be a little fluid during the day today. But these are the basic ones we have as of 10 a.m. this morning,” he said.
Here’s a look at some of the most updated numbers from Sterling:
“The biggest buckets of them are from the metro area with a handful scattered about the state. We have requested of the counties, we don’t have a right to direct them, but we have requested they get all of the absentee ballots accounted for as in they received them,” Sterling said, adding that he hopes most counties will make the deadline and upload the absentee ballots online by 1 p.m. ET today.
He added:
“Again, I want to remind everybody, these folks are all tired. They’ve had a long day and a long week and a long month and a long year, but they are doing their best to get these results quickly. I know some people were surprised how quickly results did come in, but that’s the advantage of having three races on the ballots.”
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, reiterated that President Trump is to blame for Republicans losing key races, including the presidency and now presumably two Senate races.
Remember: Democrat Raphael Warnock will win the special Senate runoff election against GOP Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler, CNN projects. While Democrat Jon Ossoff is leading GOP incumbent Sen. David Perdue, the race is still too close to call.
Sterling said that by telling people their vote doesn’t count and “don’t come and vote, then you spark a civil war within a GOP that needs to be united to get through a tough fight like this in a state that’s been trending – from the point of view of Republicans – from the other direction for years now.”
As a Republican he said, “It irritates me.”
President-elect Joe Biden released a statement today congratulating Raphael Warnock on his projected win in the Georgia Senate runoff election and paying homage to the “twin powers” of Georgia, Stacey Abrams and Keisha Lance Bottoms.
“Georgia’s voters delivered a resounding message yesterday: they want action on the crises we face and they want it right now. On COVID-19, on economic relief, on climate, on racial justice, on voting rights and so much more,” he added.
Biden says he intends to move forward with key Cabinet nominations while the Georgia results are confirmed.
“My nominees for critical national security positions at State, Defense, Treasury, and Homeland Security have bipartisan support and have been confirmed by the Senate before. They need to be in their jobs as soon as possible after January 20th,” he said.
According to Richard Barron, Fulton County Director of Registration and Elections, and Regina Waller, a spokeswoman for the Fulton Co. Board of Elections, there are roughly 7,500 ballots that still have to be adjudicated in Fulton County, which includes matching signatures.
Waller tells CNN that most of those ballots have been counted but are not included in the total until they are adjudicated.
After finishing the process with the 7,500 ballots, that will conclude absentee vote by mail until Friday, when they will count the remaining overseas and military ballots that can arrive up until then.
Barron said that the vote review panel meets at 3 p.m. they will post the latest absentee by mail totals after that.
Several Senate Republicans are privately pointing the finger squarely at President Trump for the failures in Georgia.
A senior Republican official involved in both Georgia Senate races says of Trump:
“Not since General Sherman has one man done as much damage, to as many people, in as little time. No one in the history of our country turns out voters like Donald Trump. The problem is, the overwhelming majority of them vote against him and anyone loosely affiliated with him.”
Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney weighed in on the Georgia Senate races on Wednesday morning, saying:
Romney also commented on today’s joint session of Congress, where many of his colleagues plan to challenge Electoral College results, saying “the gambit we’re seeing today is very disappointing.”
“President Trump has disrespected the American voters, has dishonored the election system and has disgraced the office of the presidency,” he continued. “I’m confident we’ll proceed as the Constitution demands and tell our supporters the truth, whether or not they want to hear it.”
Data submitted as part of a federal court order shows that USPS moved nearly all of the 471 ballots it processed on Election Day for the Georgia Senate runoff – moving them on-time, and in time to count.
The total amount of ballots processed by USPS on Election Day is down from its peak in early December — over 16,000 in one day. The data suggests that a significant number of Georgians either sent their ballots in early, or turned in their ballots in-person to election offices or ballots boxes.
The 471 ballots were processed between 80% and 97% on time.
To ensure no ballots would be left behind, the USPS also conducted sweeps of processing facilities yesterday. The final sweep found 210 ballots that the USPS delivered in time to count.
Ballots had to arrive by 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday and military and overseas ballots must arrive by Friday to count.
The data does not include ballots that are being sped up by “local turnaround,” one of the extraordinary measures USPS has implemented since December 28. Local turnaround delivers ballots directly to election officials instead of having it go first to mail processing facilities.
Gwinnett County is processing a little more than 4,800 absentee ballots that remain to be counted, county spokesperson Joe Sorenson tells CNN.
The county expects to complete the process of batching and sorting those ballots by noon ET today, take a break for lunch, and then begin tabulating the ballots in the afternoon.
Sorenson says they expect to be completed by close of business today, barring any technical issues and then those numbers will be added to Secretary of State’s election results site.
That will be the only addition to the tally today, he said. Smaller batches of other categories of ballots, like provisional, cured, and overseas ballots, will remain to be counted.
Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff holds a narrow lead over his Republican rival David Perdue in Georgia’s Senate runoff, but the race has not yet been projected.
CNN projected early Wednesday morning that Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock will win the special Senate runoff election against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
As the votes continue to be counted, here’s a look at the recount rules:
In Georgia, the county certification deadline is 5 p.m. Jan. 15
The state certification deadline is 5 p.m. Jan. 22
Rev. Raphael Warnock, who is projected to win his Senate race, said that his victory was “stunning, but I think in America anything is possible.”
“That’s why I love this country so much and I refuse to give in to the forces of cynicism,” the reverend told CNN on Wednesday. “It takes hard work. Change is slow, often it comes in fits and starts. Our democracy tends to expand and then there are moments when it contracts.”
Warnock will make history when he becomes Georgia’s first Black senator and the first Black Democrat to represent a southern state in the Senate.
Warnock also said he’d spoken to Jon Ossoff, whose race against incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue is still too close to call.
“Let me just say I’m very proud of Georgia right now. When you think about the arc of our history, what we did last night, that we are sending an African American man, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Jr. served and John Lewis worshipped, and Jon Ossoff a young Jewish man, the son of an immigrant, mentored by John Lewis, to the United States Senate in this moment in which for years now we’ve seen an emergence of those forces that will seek to divide us, we now represent the state of Georgia,” Warnock said.
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, gave an update on the state of the Senate runoff election this morning. There are “a little over 65,000 votes are still outstanding, mainly from the absentees that came in yesterday,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett, stressing that that number is an estimate.
The majority of the ballots coming in will be from traditionally Democratic areas of DeKalb, Fulton, Cobb and Henry Counties, Sterling said.
He said he expects to have a “very clear picture” of remaining votes by noon.
“We likely will see the leads of the Democrat challengers increase as we go through the morning,” he said.
A Georgia voting officials said ballots in the state’s Senate runoff races were not “found” as President Trump is claiming, instead, they are “cast ballots.”
“The mystical places are in the depths of the President’s mind. These ballots we found have been there, they are not found ballots they’re cast ballots,” Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, told CNN on Wednesday.
President Trump tweeted this morning, “They just happened to find 50,000 ballots late last night. The USA is embarrassed by fools.”
Sterling said they have known about thousands of advanced voting ballots since Friday when early voting ended.
“None of this is surprising, this is part of his intention to continue to create chaos around this as we go into his final act today as they challenge the results from Georgia and other states,” he said.
In terms of why so many Democrats turned out to vote in this election, Sterling said President Trump is also responsible for that.
“While he may inspire people on the Republican side he pisses people off on the Democratic side. When you can have a credible villain that helps the Democrats turn out their vote,” he said.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock is projected to win against GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler in one of two critical Senate runoff races in Georgia.
Fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff is currently leading Sen. David Perdue in the other race. If Ossoff wins, Democrats will claim control of the Senate with a 50/50 divide, plus a tie-breaking vote from Kamala Harris once she is sworn in as vice president.
Here’s where the vote count currently stands:
Key counties will resume counting votes this morning. They include:
In addition, the state says up to 17,000 overseas and military votes could be received by the Friday 5 p.ET m. deadline. But the expectation of the votes that will be returned by Friday will only be a fraction of that number.
This list just represents a snapshot of counties across the state and is not exhaustive. You can see a full breakdown of each county’s vote here.
Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff, whose race against incumbent Republican senator David Purdue is too close to call, spoke this morning and thanked his supporters.
Projecting confidence at his chances of winning the race, he said:
“Whether you were for me or against me, I will be for you in the US Senate. I will serve all the people of the state, I will give everything I’ve got to ensuring that Georgia’s interests are represented in the US Senate.”
Remember: CNN has not yet projected a winner in this race. You can see the latest on where the vote stands here.
He reiterated his campaign’s promise to focus on combatting the coronavirus pandemic and delivering economic relief to people who have been impacted.
“I will work in the US Senate to support a robust public health response so that we can defeat this virus … and to rush direct economic relief to people who need help right now,” he said. “This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of this state, for all the people of this state, and they will be my guiding principles as I serve this state in the US Senate, ensuring that every Georgian has great health care no matter our wealth.”
The Rev. Raphael Warnock, who CNN projects will win his Senate race, called the plans of Republican lawmakers to vote against counting electoral votes a “distraction.”
“These senators know better,” he said.
He said his opponent, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is expected to object to the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win today, “has consistently put what she perceives to be her own short-term political interests over the concerns of ordinary people.”
“And the people of Georgia rose up and they rebuked that last night,” he added.
After the Rev. Raphael Warnock was projected to win his Senate race in Georgia, he said he is “deeply honored” for being the voters’ choice.
“What Georgia did last night is its own message in the midst of a moment in which so many people are trying to divide our country,” he said on CNN Wednesday. “I’m deeply honored that the people of Georgia have placed their trust in someone who grew up in public housing, one of 12 children — I’m number 11 — the first college graduate in my family. And I hope to bring the concerns of ordinary people to the United States Senate.”
He added:
Warnock, who is the the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, says he will return to his pulpit on Sunday to preach and talk to the people.
“One of the things that I’ve learned from being a pastor is that it’s really the people who teach you how to be a good pastor, an effective pastor. And I think it’s the people who teach you how to be an effective senator,” he told CNN. “So the last thing I want to do is become disconnected from the community and just spend all of my time talking to the politicians … I have no intentions of become a politician, I intend to be a public servant.”
Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff is set to deliver remarks soon on the results in the runoff election, his campaign announced.
Ossoff is currently leading over his Republican rival Sen. David Perdue by some 16,000 votes.
Here’s where the vote tally currently stands:
Democrat Raphael Warnock, who is projected to win one of Georgie’s Senate seats, said his first priority in Washington will be addressing the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ve got to respond in an intelligent and thoughtful way to this pandemic. We’ve got to get the vaccine safely and efficiently distributed and we need to get people the relief that they need,” he said on CNN this morning.
Warnock added that he wants to work to pass further stimulus legislation.
“We ought to pass a $2,000 stimulus relief and give ordinary struggling people who are literally just trying to keep their head above water what they need, so that we can begin to get the economy going again,” he said.
Georgia voters went to the polls yesterday to vote in two runoff elections for the state’s US senators.
Here’s where things stand this morning:
Republican candidate David Perdue’s campaign called for “time and transparency to be certain the results are fair and accurate and the voices of Georgians are heard” in a statement early Wednesday.
“We will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots are properly counted. We believe in the end, Senator Perdue will be victorious,” the statement reads.
The control of the US Senate now comes down to Perdue, who is running to keep his seat against Democrat Jon Ossoff.
Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock will defeat GOP candidate Kelly Loeffler, CNN projects.
Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, will make history as the first Black US senator from Georgia.
In an address earlier Wednesday, Warnock spoke to his supporters and thanked them.
“To everyone out there struggling today, whether you voted for me or not, know this,” Warnock said. “I hear you, I see you and every day I’m in the United States Senate I will fight for you.”
Warnock is the first Georgia Democrat elected to the Senate in 20 years, and his election is the culmination of years of voter registration drives conducted by former state House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams and other activists.
President-elect Joe Biden also won Georgia, the first time for a Democratic presidential candidate since the 1990s.
Some context: The party that wins the race between GOP candidate David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff will take control of the Senate.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo and John Berman have more:
Election workers in Fulton County will be wrapping up and will resume counting the remaining absentee ballots at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, according to an announcement made inside the vote-counting center.
As previously reported, 4,000 absentee ballots have yet to be tabulated.
DeKalb County, in suburban Atlanta, began experiencing vote count delays early Wednesday morning due to some kind of technical issue at the election office.
Due to these issues, an election official says the 19,000 remaining ballots will be “manually scanned to be tabulated and added to the total vote count.”
“Georgia’s voting system provides built-in-safeguards, in the form of paper ballots, that allow us to quickly process ballots that are electronically cast. These outstanding paper ballots are currently being scanned and the tabulation will be completed as quickly as possible and in compliance with State guidelines,” Erica Hamilton, director of voter registration and elections, said in a statement.
The county is a Democratic stronghold.
Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff’s campaign has released a statement expressing confidence in winning the runoff election when “all the votes are counted.”
“When all the votes are counted we fully expect that Jon Ossoff will have won this election to represent Georgia in the United States Senate,” the statement said.
“We look forward to seeing the process through in the coming hours and moving ahead so Jon can start fighting for all Georgians in the U.S. Senate,” the statement continues.
CNN has not made a projection in the race. Ossoff is currently neck-and-neck with Republican rival David Perdue.
DeKalb County, in suburban Atlanta, began experiencing vote count delays early Wednesday morning due to some kind of technical issue at the election office.
County CEO Michael Thurmond told CNN the county is working to fix the delay and expects to release more details soon.
“We’re working on getting you out a statement shortly,” he said.
The county currently has about 19,000 outstanding in-person early votes yet to be reported.
CNN’s Nick Valencia has more:
In a speech to supporters, Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock projected confidence that he would win his race against GOP candidate Kelly Loeffler, by saying he’s “going to the Senate to work for all of Georgia.”
“To everyone out there struggling today, whether you voted for me or not, know this,” Warnock said. “I hear you, I see you and every day I’m in the United States Senate I will fight for you.”
CNN has yet to call his Georgia Senate race. Warnock currently is ahead of Loeffler by more than 35,649 votes.
Warnock recalled his family history as an example of how historic his candidacy is for the nation. If he were to win the election, he would become the first Black senator from Georgia.
“As a son of Georgia, my roots are planted deeply in Georgia soil,” Warnock said. “A son of my late father who was a pastor, a veteran, and a small business man. And my mother who as a teenager growing up in Waycross, Georgia, used to pick somebody’s else’s cotton. But the other day because this is America, 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator.”
Watch the moment:
Republican Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler spoke briefly to supporters after midnight in Atlanta, neither conceding nor claiming victory in the Georgia Senate runoff election.
“It’s gonna be another late night, there are a lot of votes out there as you all know, and we have a path to victory and we’re staying on it,” Loeffler told the crowd.
“This is a game of inches, we’re gonna win this election,” she added.
“It’s worth it for this election to last into tomorrow, we’re going to make sure every vote is counted,” Loeffler said. “Every legal vote will be counted.”
Loeffler thanked her supporters, reiterated her support for President Trump, and said she will be in Washington, DC, tomorrow for the count of the Electoral College votes in Congress.
“In the morning in fact I’m going to be heading to Washington, DC, to fight,” Loeffler said. “We’re gonna fight for this President, so I’m asking for every single Georgian, every single American stay in the fight with us.”
Watch the moment:
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager, just delivered what he said would be the final briefing from the Georgia secretary of state’s office for the night.
Sterling said overall, it looks like they have about 27,600 or so advance votes to come in. About 19,000 will come in from DeKalb County and about 7,000 from Coffee County. He added that there will be a hodgepodge of other votes in other locations.
There is a small list of incomplete counties: Appling, Bibb, Camden, Cobb, Coffee, DeKalb, Douglas, Floyd, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Houston, Lumpkin, Newton and Pickens.
Sterling said there were 1,244,374 votes cast on Election Day, which is more than they anticipated.
He also said the secretary of state’s office asked counties to please finish processing absentee ballots that were received on Election Day by lunchtime Wednesday.
On Chatham County, Sterling said they did not just stop counting for the night, and he explained they have counted everything they have.
Chatham has a unique system — they have both a Board of Elections and a Board of Registrations. The Board of Registration gets the ballots in, accepts them, then hands them to Board of Elections to count them. Out of abundance of looking out for employees, they will allow the registration group to finish their work tonight, then hands over in the morning for the Board of Elections to finish. What’s left is the absentee ballots that came in today via mail and drop box.
“In terms of the amount of votes that are potentially out there are coming from largely Democratic counties, there are some Republican counties – Floyd, Forsyth, Appling – but they are smaller in comparison to DeKalb’s, Gwinnett’s, Cobb’s and Fulton’s,” Sterling said. “That tells you that the outstanding will likely be leaning Democrat at best.”
Sterling said he believes there will be a midmorning update Wednesday.
As CNN reported earlier, Republicans were very concerned about the release of votes in the Democratic stronghold of DeKalb County.
Once those results came in and dramatically swung the race in favor of Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock and also narrowed the gap for Democrat Jon Ossoff, GOP operatives conceded that their path to victory was narrow and starting to vanish.
One Georgia Republican said he believed the outstanding vote was too heavily tilted in favor of the Democrats for either Republican to be able to win.
Another Washington Republican operative said the best hope at this point for the GOP is that Perdue can keep the margin close enough that would allow for a recount, but even that seemed unlikely.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger tonight hailed the state’s “tremendous turnout,” but warned votes are still coming in from across the state and overseas that might ultimately determine the outcome of the two Senate races.
“Its very close as you can see,” Raffensperger said, speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer just before midnight.
Raffensperger, who is a Republican, declined to speculate on how the distribution of uncounted votes might affect the final count, but said unprocessed ballots were “somewhat scattered” across the state.
“We are a very competitive state,” Raffensperger told CNN. “We are just going to have to wait and see how this all turns out.”
He also pointed out that up to 17,000 overseas and military ballots would not be counted until Friday at 5 p.m., and indicated that election officials may soon pause counting for the night.
Raffensperger, who is charge of Georgia’s elections, hailed the large turnout, saying he believed it could reach nearly 4.6 million once all ballots are counted. In contrast, about 5 million Georgians voted in the 2020 election.
It’s been a “tremendous turnout,” he said.
Watch Raffensperger’s interview:
It is a little past midnight, and the margins between the GOP and Democratic candidates remain razor-thin with at least 97% of the votes tallied.
Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock currently is ahead of GOP candidate Kelly Loeffler by more than 35,000 votes.
Meanwhile, GOP candidate David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff both are extremely close.
Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta, has finished counting for the day, leaving just under 4,800 absentee and a small number of military ballots and cured absentee ballots to be counted, county officials said.
The county has counted all Election Day ballots, advance in-person ballots, and most of the absentee by mail ballots have been counted and posted to the secretary of state’s website, county spokesperson Joe Sorenson said.
The county will begin counting the small number of ballots beginning at 8 a.m. tomorrow.
Democrats Rev. Raphael Warnock has just taken the lead over incumbent GOP Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler.
Warnock currently holds a 32,214-vote lead over Loeffler.
Republican David Perdue’s lead has narrowed as more votes trickle in tonight. Here’s where things stand:
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has more:
The biggest chunk of outstanding votes is the early in-person voting numbers from DeKalb County, Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, told CNN this evening. Sterling confirmed that 171,000 early in-person votes have not been calculated yet in the county.
“DeKalb County is going to have a really big impact on the outcome, but like I said there are dozens and dozens of counties out there and you take lots of counties with a few votes margin versus one big county with a big vote margin, they can even out,” Sterling said. “So we potentially have a long night ahead.”
DeKalb county is heavily Democratic and played a key role in handing President-elect Joe Biden a victory in the state in the presidential election.
“The largest number of outstanding votes is still right here and those are early in-person votes for DeKalb. This could be good news for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock,” CNN’s Nick Valencia noted tonight.
DeKalb surpassed in-person, Election Day voting from November today, a spokesperson for the county told CNN earlier this evening.
Watch Sterling’s interview:
With at least 91% of estimated votes, the Senate runoff elections are still too close to call and the margins are razor-thin.
Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling told CNN just now that there are still at least 171,000 early in-person votes from Democratic-leaning DeKalb County that haven’t been reported yet.
Incumbent GOP candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are currently ahead Democratic rivals Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
Here’s where things stand in both races:
Rev. Raphael Warnock’s campaign is eyeing absentee ballot reports tonight to boost their numbers.
As the Democrat’s campaign has been doing throughout the night, a senior Warnock campaign aide stressed it is too early to make any predictions with too much of the vote is outstanding.
“Patiently waiting! Not jumping the gun over here,” the senior aide said in reaction to the latest numbers.
Here’s a look at where things stand right now:
Supervisor of Elections Russell Bridges is predicting the majority of vote tallies from Chatham County will be uploaded to the secretary of state’s office by around 11 p.m. ET.
“When we finish tonight, we’ll probably have about 3,000 absentee ballots outstanding,” Bridges said.
That does not include counting ballots that can be cured and overseas/military absentee ballots, which are allowed to arrive by Friday.
The official said the Board of Elections is in the process of tabulating everything they have.
As far as turnout, that is still unclear. Bridges said he would call today’s voting “Steady. It was not heavy.”
Fulton County elections director Richard Barron said they expect to process the vast majority of the county’s ballots on Tuesday night.
Barron said more people voted in-person today in the county than on Election Day in November. He said about 60,000 voted in-person that day, whereas he said he believed about 70,000 voted Tuesday, though he called that number a “rough estimate.”
The key county is the largest in the state and includes most of the city of Atlanta.
The country is awaiting results in the crucial Senate runoff elections that will determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate.
Watch Fulton County officials count the ballots:
President-elect Joe Biden is at home tonight in Wilmington, Delaware, closely watching results from the Georgia Senate contests that could put an exclamation point on his campaign season.
“His presidency doesn’t depend on it, but the early success and ease of his confirmations certainly do,” a person close to Biden said, speaking about the stakes of the runoff races.
As the night wears on, Biden and his team are clear-eyed about Georgia. Even if Democrats win both races, which remained an uphill battle in the eyes of many advisers, he will still need to rely on winning some bipartisan support for any major legislative victories.
But even before the outcome is known, advisers see at least one early sign of optimism: both Democratic candidates in Georgia ran as strong allies to Biden – and there were no whiffs of internal tensions among Democrats that have erupted throughout the party in other races last year and, of course, in Congress.
While the Georgia results will surely not resolve long term questions about the direction of the Democratic Party – particularly the ones already poised to erupt this year – Biden loyalists believe it offers a roadmap to how the party should govern and campaign.
The fact that both races are even in play tonight, allies to the President-elect say, is due to Biden expanding the map two months ago.
It’s an open question whether that will be enough, however, as the races tighten dramatically.
The mood of a senior Democratic official watching the returns closely began turning a bit more pessimistic as the night moved along, saying turnout on Election Day wasn’t as high in some areas as they had hoped.
With at least 67% of the estimated vote in, the Republicans have now overtaken the Democrats in the Senate runoff races.
Incumbent Republican Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are now leading Democratic rivals Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
Here’s a look at where things stand in the races:
President Trump will be to blame if either or both Georgia Republicans lose their seats tonight, Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, told CNN this evening.
“It will fall squarely on the shoulders of President Trump and his actions since November 3rd,” Sterling told CNN, clarifying that he was speaking as an individual and not in his role as an elections official.
“When you tell people ‘your vote doesn’t count and it has been stolen’ and people start to believe that and then you go to the two senators and tell them to ask secretary of state to resign, and trigger a civil war inside the Republican Party, when we need Republicans to unite,” said Sterling.
“All of that stems from his decision-making since November 3rd election,” he said.
Sterling, who hosted a lengthy news conference on Monday in which he debunked many of Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, went on tonight to address the President directly.
“Mr. President, you’ve already lost the state of Georgia,” he said. “The thing now is, no matter what you say, you can’t undermine the people of Georgia’s integrity to know their voting system works and their vote is going to count at the end of the day, one way or the other how this election comes out.”
Watch the interview:
The Democratic lead in Georgia is narrowing as more votes are counted tonight.
Republicans are closing the gap with more than half the state’s results in. In the race between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff, Perdue has taken a slight lead.
Here’s a look at where things stand in that race:
Here’s where things stand between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Kelly Loeffler:
Fulton County election workers have faced death threats and racial slurs in the run-up to Election Day, the county director of elections, Richard Barron, told reporters Tuesday.
While Barron said the county experienced no major incidents Tuesday, he said a man made a bomb threat against the county last Wednesday and that the FBI visited that individual at his home Thursday.
“The person said that the Nashville bombing was a practice run for what we would see today at one of our polling places,” Barron said.
“Several” county staffers have also received death threats, Barron said.
“And we have had innumerable racial slurs thrown at our staff, mostly via phone but some on social media as well, and that’s been a really disappointing, just disconcerting turn of events,” he said.
Barron also referenced “some of the things that President Trump said that were false.” He said the county elections department has fully cooperated with investigations involving the Georgia secretary of state.
“We’ll continue to work with that and to conduct our elections in compliance with the law,” he said.
As votes continue to be counted in Georgia’s Senate runoff races, CNN’s Pamela Brown said it “could be a very long night,” as key counties in the state report the results.
“Sources I’m speaking to on the ground there in Georgia say even though it could be a very long night they are happy with how things are playing out so far with how quickly they are able to tabulate these early votes,” Brown said.
Brown went on to report what Georgia officials in several counties are telling her about how the vote counting process is going so far:
Fulton County
“We are told by an official there that they have on track on processing and should be able to process almost all or if not all ballots tonight.”
DeKalb County
“They’re waiting to see how the tabulation is going before deciding their timeline tonight.”
Cobb County
“Last time during the general, they left around 3 a.m., 4 a.m. and then resumed several hours later. I am told it is going to be a repeat there in Cobb.”
Gwinnett County
“I am told by an official there, if it seems achievable, county officials would work through the night.”
Some more context: Brown said certain extensions are helping with the vote-counting process. “It is also important to point out the state’s system they would used for signature verification for those absentee ballots to processing them, that is now extended, the hours for that — until 2 a.m.,” Brown said. “It was going to shutdown 11 p.m. That’ll help these officials in Georgia processing and tabulate those absentee ballots.”
CNN’s Pam Brown breaks it down:
Election officials in Chatham County are prepared to count all night to deliver results, the county’s Elections Board Chairman Tom Mahoney told CNN’s Martin Savidge tonight.
The first round of votes are expected to come in before 9:30 p.m., Mahoney told CNN. First in-person early votes are expected and then early absentee votes, which could total between 68,000 to 72,000 ballots, he said.
At around midnight, Mahoney said he expects to have close to the total numbers of all those who voted today.
Officials in Chatham County are hoping to have nearly all the votes counted by the end of the night, but Mahoney warned that if a large influx of new votes come in at around midnight, they will consider pausing the count to continue sometime Wednesday morning.
“It is their hope, and they believe they still can get this all done tonight,” said Savidge.
Even if the vast majority of ballots are counted tonight, however, some overseas and provisional ballots would remain outstanding. Those must be counted by 5 p.m. on Friday.
CNN’s Martin Savidge has more:
Gwinnett County spokesperson Joe Sorenson said they probably will continue counting ballots through Thursday.
The “adjudication teams” are scheduled to arrive that day, to deal with challenged ballots. Officials don’t expect many to need adjudication, it will hold up the process.
Gwinnett County is located in the Atlanta suburbs, a Democratic stronghold.
Right now, poll managers are checking in with their actual ballots and electronic ballots.
The electronic ballots will then be run through a machine in the back room. He said they will probably convene the election board to call it a night at some point later tonight, knowing that there will still be work to do in the coming days.
Keep in mind that military/overseas ballots have until the end of the day Friday to arrive and get counted.
Fulton County, which includes most of the city of Atlanta, should be able to process the vast majority of its ballots on Tuesday night, according to county elections director Richard Barron.
“We are on track with processing. We should be able to process almost all, if not all, ballots tonight,” Barron told reporters Tuesday.
Barron said more people voted in-person today in the county than on Election Day for the general election in November. He said about 60,000 voted in-person that day, whereas he said he believed about 70,000 voted Tuesday, though he called that number a “rough estimate.”
Barron said the county has received about 108,000 absentee ballots and has scanned about 100,500 of those ballots already. “We will upload more absentee-by-mail results later.”
CNN’s Drew Griffin has more:
President-elect Joe Biden is at home tonight in Wilmington, Delaware, closely watching results from the Georgia Senate races. Yes, the success of his agenda hinges on the outcome – but so, too, may his nominee for attorney general.
Two weeks before taking office, Biden has yet to reveal his decision for one of the most important positions in his Cabinet. But in fact, two people familiar with the matter tell CNN, he has yet to make a final choice.
Late last month, Biden told reporters he was not waiting until the Georgia races to make his decision. But tonight, that’s exactly what he is doing. Advisers insist it’s because of a variety of factors, not simply learning whether Democrats will win control of the Senate.
Biden is still weighing two top contenders: Federal Judge Merrick Garland and former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones. Tonight, a person close to the process tells CNN that former acting attorney general Sally Yates is still in the mix, adding: “She would instantly be a top contender if Democrats win control of the Senate.”
But if Republicans maintain control of the Senate, Yates faces a far more difficult path to confirmation – and Biden advisers have said she is unlikely to be even nominated. Many Republicans remain furious that the FBI launched its investigation of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign during her tenure. She was fired by President Trump for refusing to defend his travel ban.
Biden has been locked in complicated deliberations over his attorney general nominee. Could Georgia change that calculus yet again?
Results continue to come in out of Georgia, helping paint an early picture of the Senate runoff races. Most of the results coming in so far are from early voting, which favors Democrats.
At least 43% of the estimated vote is in, with Democrats currently leading.
Here’s where things stand in the race between Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock and Republican candidate Kelly Loeffler:
Here’s where things stand in the race between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican candidate David Perdue:
Some polls in Georgia are closing and results are starting to come in. It is still too early to call the crucial Senate runoff races.
The country is laser-focused on tonight’s election for one key reason: it will determine which party controls the Senate.
Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock are looking to defeat incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.
Here are key things to know about the candidates:
Vice President Mike Pence just left the White House moments ago, signaling he won’t watch the returns from the Georgia Senate runoff races with President Trump.
It’s unusual given Trump and Pence typically spend election nights together at the White House and both have campaigned on behalf of Republicans in tonight’s race.
The absence of a viewing party may be more in line with the current state of their relationship, given Trump’s building frustration with Pence over his role (or lack of) in tomorrow’s proceedings in Congress that will count and certify the Electoral College votes for president and vice president.
Pence and Trump dined together today as officials are bracing themselves for Trump’s reaction to the congressional certification.
Republicans in both chambers plan to object to the count and delay the inevitable certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
CNN’s political director David Chalian explained that 94% of the vote that we are seeing so far is from the early vote. He also reminded viewers that early voting tends to favor Democrats, and is subject to change as more results roll in.
Early voting, Chalian explained, includes both early in-person voting and absentee mail-voting, both of which are “happening a lot more because of the pandemic.”
President Trump has been an outspoken critic of absentee ballots, and that may have pushed some Republicans to vote in person instead. “That depressed Republicans from using that method of voting,” Chalian said.
Meanwhile, “we see more Democrats voting early, voting by mail, and right now that’s making up the bulk of the vote in Georgia. That’s why you see that inflated lead for Democrats,” Chalian explained.
But as the night goes on, this lead could shift in the GOP’s favor. “Election day results tend to favor Republicans,” Chalian said. As a result, he concluded, “we’ll see the race get a lot closer.”
Watch the moment here:
Independent voters in Georgia were narrowly divided in Tuesday’s Senate runoff elections, with Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff holding a slight advantage, according to the results of a preliminary exit poll.
Similarly, suburban voters, who made up 6 in 10 voters in the election, were divided nearly in half, according to the early exit poll.
The CNN exit poll was conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News. Interviews were completed with 5,260 voters in one of three ways: in-person on Election Day at 39 polling places across Georgia, in-person at 25 early voting locations around the state or by telephone for voters who cast ballots by mail or in-person during early voting.
Results for the full sample of voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, it is larger for subgroups.
More than 450,000 people in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, voted in Georgia’s runoff election, according to the county director of elections, Richard Barron, who compared that number to the 528,000 people in the county who voted in November’s election.
Barron said at least 71,000 people voted Tuesday, but he described that as a “rough number” because not every precinct has entered all votes yet.
He said that a release of early voting results will be shared at 8 p.m. and that Election Day results should be in by 9 p.m. “Hopefully the bulk of the results will be in by midnight,” he said.
Remarking on voting in the county overall, Barron said, “Things went really well today.”
CNN’s chief national correspondent John King gave viewers a replay of how the lead changed in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, warning viewers not to draw premature conclusion until every last vote has been counted, possibly in the days to come.
“We’re doing this to remind people we need to wait for all of the pie,” said King, using the Magic Wall to demonstrate how mail-in ballots trickled in from Nov. 3-5, before the lead flipped to Joe Biden on Nov. 6.
“We will get the pie in different order, pieces of the pie in different order,” he added about tonight’s contests.
King demonstrated how President Trump’s initial lead on Nov. 3., eventually flipped on Nov. 6., as mail-in votes were counted. Trump ultimately lost the state of Georgia.
“They have recounted these votes three times now,” King pointed out. “Joe Biden won the state despite what you hear from the President and his allies. They’ve been recounted three times.”
King said viewers might see the lead flip the opposite direction in the hours and days following tonight’s elections.
“The reason we went through the exercise of what happened in the presidential race is we could see an example of maybe the flip side,” he said. “We may see blue in a lot of places that we expect by the end of tonight or by tomorrow may be red.”
“We are nowhere near where we need to be to understand the dynamics of this race yet,” King added later.
Watch the moment here:
About 6 in 10 voters over 65 years old in Georgia’s runoff elections cast their ballots for Republican Sen. David Perdue, giving him a 24-point lead over Democrat Jon Ossoff in this group. That’s slightly larger than the lead Perdue held over Ossoff in November.
But young voters moved toward the Democratic candidate; 2 in 3 voters under 30 years old cast their ballots for Ossoff, up from just 54% in November. Still, this group made up only 1 in 8 voters, down from 1 in 5 in November.
The CNN exit poll was conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News.
Interviews were completed with 5,260 voters in one of three ways: in-person on Election Day at 39 polling places across Georgia, in-person at 25 early voting locations around the state or by telephone for voters who cast ballots by mail or in-person during early voting. Results for the full sample of voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, it is larger for subgroups.
Some Georgia voters who bucked traditional election patterns in November’s contest between President Trump and Joe Biden appear to have returned home to their corners in Tuesday’s pivotal Senate runoff races, according to preliminary exit poll results.
College-educated White voters, particularly men, shifted back toward Republicans after shifting toward Biden in the general election. Republican Sen. David Perdue won college-educated men by 14 points in November, but more than doubled that lead to more than 30 points on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Democrats appeared to erase any gains Trump had made among non-White voters in November. Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff consolidated Black voters around his bid, growing his lead from 76 points in November to 86 points now. Likewise, Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Ossoff by only 9 points in November, but he led them by 30 points Tuesday, the preliminary exit poll shows.
The CNN exit poll was conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News.
Interviews were completed with 5,260 voters in one of three ways: in-person on Election Day at 39 polling places across Georgia, in-person at 25 early voting locations around the state or by telephone for voters who cast ballots by mail or in-person during early voting. Results for the full sample of voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, it is larger for subgroups.
In its final sweep of processing facilities in Georgia, the United States Postal Service says they found 210 ballots, which they delivered to election officials.
According to the data, submitted by the USPS as part of a federal court order, 101 ballots were found at the North Metro Processing and Distribution Center in Duluth, Georgia. Another 109 ballots were found at the Atlanta Processing and Distribution Center.
The other five USPS processing centers that serve Georgia were swept and no other ballots were found.
Mail in ballots in Georgia must be received by mail or ballot dropbox by the time the polls close, which was 7 p.m. today. (But overseas and military ballots have until the end of the day on Friday to arrive.)
The twin Senate runoffs in Georgia that will decide which party controls the US Senate already represent the two most expensive congressional races in US history, according to a new analysis by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Together, the races – which pit Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock against Republicans David Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler – have drawn more than $830 million in spending. The tally includes spending in the primary, general and runoff elections by the candidates and outside groups.
The Ossoff-Perdue race, which saw nearly $470 million in spending through Monday, is the most expense Senate contest ever. The price tag on the Warnock-Loeffler race: nearly $363 million, securing a spot as the second most costly race.
Those figures will only climb once the candidates file post-election spending reports with federal regulators, the Center’s researchers note.
Georgia’s voter registration system (ENET) will now be open until 2 a.m. Wednesday instead of 11 p.m. Tuesday, which will help with processing for mail in-ballots because it is also used for signature verification, according to Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling.
The “vast majority” of results, including “nearly all results received by yesterday,” will be “reported by tonight,” Sterling said. But counties will still need time to count ballots that arrived today. Military ballots have until Friday to arrive and be counted.
The secretary of state’s office has asked officials to input the number of ballots received by mail and ballot boxes for acceptance by 1 p.m. tomorrow.
After that, they can be processed and tabulated. They’ve asked, but not required, for all of it to be put in system as received by then, with the exception of the ballots allowed Friday.
Most polls are now closing across Georgia tonight.
Voters headed to the polls today to cast ballots in two crucial Senate races, which will determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate, which will greatly affect the kind of legislation President-elect Joe Biden would be able to pass through the chamber once he takes office later this month.
CNN’s Pam Brown has more:
In the final hour of voting, Democrat Jon Ossoff stopped by a polling location to do some line warming.
He made the stop at a high Democratic precinct with a line in metro Atlanta. He’s encouraging voters to stay in line, even as temperatures start to drop quickly now that the sun has set. Ossoff will watch results with his core team.
A senior campaign aide for Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock says the campaign believes Democratic runoff voters are not voting because they’re angry at President Trump, but driven to vote for Warnock on his message and to put the first Black senator from Georgia in the US Senate.
The history making turn of these two candidates attempting to be the first Jewish senator (Ossoff) and first Black senator from Georgia is not lost on voters, Warnock aide said.
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, just delivered his third briefing to the press on runoff election day.
Sterling, correcting himself from earlier, said the actual outstanding overall number of absentee ballots is 229,357.
Sterling said he can’t gauge in-person turnout today yet – and wasn’t able to tell reporters how it compares to in-person turnout in November.
He added that they continue to see smooth voting throughout the state, but they’re starting to see a buildup of some lines – particularly in Cherokee, Houston, Paulding and Forsyth counties, where some lines are approaching an hour, but they haven’t seen anything over that.
Sterling said that a handful of counties received judicial extensions – some of which he mentioned earlier:
Chatham County Board of Elections member Antwan Lang tells CNN’s Martin Savidge and Pamela Kirkland that the board had requested the Old Courthouse and Beach High School precincts remain open after technical difficulties this afternoon caused a delay of about 35 minutes.
A court order from Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass extended the Old Courthouse precinct to 7:33 p.m. ET and Beach High School to 7:35 p.m. ET.
The extension does not stop the 90 other precincts from reporting their vote tallies at 7 p.m. ET or delay the Board of Elections from beginning the count at 7 p.m. ET.
Stacey Abrams, voting rights activist, said the steady stream of voters from both sides of the aisle signals that “it’s going to be a tight race.”
Abrams also expressed confidence in the state’s election process. “I think we continue to make progress. Now, let’s be clear, we have not fully eliminated voter suppression in Georgia or across the country, but we have made dramatic strides, from even June and certainly 2018,” Abrams said.
When discussing the chances of Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock winning the seats, Abrams explained, “Being a battleground means you have to fight for victory.”
“Republicans for 20 years took for granted their successes. We made them fight in 2018, we made them fight in 2020 and we won the battle in 2020. We’re going to win this battle in 2021 whether it’s by winning these two elections or by forcing Republicans to take seriously the need of Democrats, the needs of independents, the needs of the people. We are going to be able to compel Republicans to actually have to talk about the issues and debate the issues as opposed to having a fait accompli for their ideas,” she added.
Watch the interview:
Democrats are messaging internally to brace for a huge Republican lead when the first returns come in, a senior aide for Jon Ossoff’s campaign tells CNN.
Democrats anticipate that what’s going to be reported first are smaller, conservative counties, counting in-person voting. They are expecting a majority of today’s vote could go GOP.
“We will be wildly down tonight,” says the senior aide. But the aide says the campaigns are urging to not read too much into tonight until the four big counties come in.
Polls close across Georgia at 7 p.m. ET, and so much rests on the outcomes of today’s runoff elections.
The races will determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate, which will greatly affect the kind of legislation President-elect Joe Biden would be able to pass through the chamber once he takes office later this month.
Here are some of the key areas that the results will impact:
President-elect Joe Biden’s team is optimistic heading into tonight’s Senate runoff elections in Georgia, with a source close to the transition saying “We have a good shot.”
The source acknowledged Democratic victories in the state would make it easier for the President-elect to move his agenda through Congress but also argued he’s looking to accomplish some of his goals through bipartisan pushes.
“Certainly winning would ease the path for a lot of what the President-elect wants to get done,” the source said. “But we intend to achieve bipartisan success” regardless of the outcome in the runoffs.
The President-elect in recent days has also framed this race as one that will impact Covid-19 relief and vaccinations, arguing that Democratic wins would help get $2,000 stimulus checks to American families faster and provide necessary funding to local and state governments for vaccinations.
Biden and his team have devoted significant time and resources to the runoffs in the state as they hope to boost the Democratic candidates.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have each campaigned in the state twice, including trips in the last 48 hours of the race. They have poured $18 million into the runoffs and deployed staffers to work with the teams on the ground.
At least two counties in Georgia have surpassed in-person Election Day voting totals from November 2020 today.
With roughly 90 minutes left to go until polls are slated to close, DeKalb County has surpassed in-person, Election Day voting from November today, a county spokesperson told CNN. The county, which is one of the most populous in the state, saw 47,561 in-person Election Day votes in the general election, and as of roughly 5:20 p.m., the county had seen 51,000 in-person votes today.
Forsyth County, located further north outside of Atlanta, has also surpassed its 2020 Election Day in-person voting total, Voter Registrations and Elections Department Director Mandi Smith told CNN. In November, 13,630 votes were cast on Election Day.
Polls for Georgia’s crucial runoff Senate elections are set to close in the state at 7 p.m. ET. The twin US Senate runoffs in Georgia mean everything in American government for the next two years.
President-elect Joe Biden will either have a Republican-led Senate working to block him or a (barely) Democratic-controlled Senate trying to help him out. And the races will determine whether Republicans have the advantage or there’s a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris giving Democrats the edge.
But it’s not clear how quickly we’ll know the results. CNN took until Nov. 13 to project Biden’s victory in Georgia’s presidential contest, 10 days after Election Day.
There’s plenty of reason to expect a repeat. Early voting, the counting of which helped drag out the presidential results, is nearly keeping track in these special runoffs. In Fulton County, the state’s most populous, the elections administrator said Monday that the early vote totals were larger for January than for November.
Republicans in the state have expressed concern that there may be a Democratic edge in the early vote totals. Which means that Republicans may need a strong showing on Election Day again.
That’s where President Trump’s feud with Republican state officials over his own loss in the state could mean the difference in the GOP having a majority going forward.
Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have both been actively working to get their messages out as voters head to the polls in Georgia. Polls are set to close in the state at 7 p.m. ET.
Here’s what campaign aides said about the candidate’s activities:
From a Warnock senior campaign aide:
“Rev. Warnock is not only doing the previously press-advised in-person GOTV events, he is also burning up the phone lines calling into Black radio across the state. It’s being characterized to CNN as ‘marathon call-ins’ to radio during morning and evening drive hours. He’s called into Black talk radio, gospel radio in South Georgia, Rickey Smiley’s syndicated show (because of Georgia ratings) and local TV stations. Markets he’s focused his call-ins: Atlanta, Albany, Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Augusta. He’s focusing on places where he can grab the last-minute eyes and ears of Black voters in this final GOTV push.’
From an Ossoff senior campaign aide:
Jon Ossoff is in the middle of 25 interviews with last-minute interviews with local press. He’s focusing on the same TV and radio markets—a good portion of the interviews are with Black radio. The Ossoff campaign also is touting making 1.5 million last-minute phone calls to voters from their campaign—this is their campaign only, not the coordinated or PAC efforts. They say they were outspent on TV but hope their field investments will pay off with direct voter contacts.
Both aides tell CNN that Warnock and Ossoff will not be in the same place tonight — senior aides say they’ll be in the Atlanta area.
The campaigns have their own separate data/war rooms but are working in concert tonight.
Georgia voters who cast ballots in the runoff elections that will determine control of the US Senate mostly say that their state’s presidential election in November was conducted fairly, and around three-quarters say they are confident their vote in this election will be counted accurately, according to the early results of an exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.
Those views are sharply divided by party, as both Republican candidates for Senate in today’s contests have expressed support for a planned effort to reject Electoral College votes as they are presented to Congress on Wednesday. Among Georgia Republicans who voted in the runoff elections, about three-quarters say that the presidential election in Georgia was not conducted fairly, while more than 9 in 10 Democrats say the election, which President-elect Biden won by less than 12,000 votes, was fair.
Republicans voting in the Senate runoffs appear to have a bit more faith in today’s election than they do in November’s contest. About half of Republicans feel confident their votes in the runoff elections will be counted accurately. Among Democrats, more than 9 in 10 are confident their vote in the runoff will be counted accurately, as are 7 in 10 independents. That’s a reversal compared with November. According to the exit poll in November, 92% of Republicans were confident that votes in their state would be counted accurately, while only 79% of Democrats felt the same.
Demographically, the electorate so far looks a bit older than the November electorate, according to the preliminary results of the exit poll, but it is similar in its makeup by gender, race and education.
Voting in Georgia has occurred amid rising coronavirus cases and hospitalizations nationwide. About 7 in 10 voters say they are at least somewhat worried that they or someone in their families will be infected with the virus. Majorities across party lines express worry about coronavirus reaching their family, including about 8 in 10 Democrats, two-thirds of independents and roughly 6 in 10 Republicans, but the partisan divides are larger over whether to prioritize limiting the spread of the virus or rebuilding the economy.
A slim majority of all voters in the runoff elections say it is more important to contain the coronavirus now, even if it hurts the economy, while about 4 in 10 prioritize rebuilding the economy even if it hurts the effort to contain the spread of the virus, according to preliminary exit poll results. Eight in 10 Democrats prioritize limiting the spread of the virus, while about two-thirds of Republicans say the economy should be the higher priority. Among independents, a narrow majority say limiting the spread is more important.
The economic effects of the pandemic have reached many who voted in today’s contests. Most Georgia voters say they have faced at least moderate financial hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic, including about 1 in 6 who say they have suffered severe financial hardship.
The CNN exit poll was conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News. Interviews were completed with 5,260 voters in one of three ways: In-person on Election Day at 39 polling places across Georgia, in-person at 25 early voting locations around the state or by telephone for voters who cast ballots by mail or in-person during early voting. Results for the full sample of voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, it is larger for subgroups.
CNN’s David Chalian reports:
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger once again pushed back against President Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the state, saying in an interview this evening that he stands by his state’s presidential election results.
According to an audio recording of a phone call obtained by CNN and first reported by the Washington Post, Trump pushed Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn the election results after his loss to President-elect Joe Biden.
Raffensperger told CNN that his call with the President made it obvious to him that he had “bad data.”
“He just has bad data and when you have good data, you know that you can stand by your results and our results were accurate,” Raffensperger told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“We are standing on the truth,” the official said.
“We have our results and our results are accurate. What happens in other states I can’t say, but I know that we followed the process, we followed the law,” he continued.
Raffensperger said he’s received death threats, and his wife was sent “sexualized” texts. “What kind of a person does that? That’s disgusting,” he said.
With only a few hours until Georgia’s polls close, the secretary of state urged residents to go out and vote. He assured Georgians that today’s election is secure.
“I would encourage every Georgian if you haven’t voted yet, put away all of this negative stuff that will keep you away from the polls and get out and vote,” he said.
“Please get out to vote,” the official repeated.
Watch the moment:
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, told reporters that if he were the betting type, he would anticipate that it will be a couple of days until the final tallies are known in Georgia.
“I would anticipate it was going to be a couple of days,” Sterling said Tuesday afternoon.
He also said that it’s hard to project turnout today, saying the day-of voting total could be anywhere between 600,000 to 1.1 million.
Sterling added that the short lines and wait times many polling places are experiencing are not indications of low turnout, but instead could be indications that the poll workers are efficient and have gotten the process down.
He told CNN to expect a “flood” of returns between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. tonight in Georgia. A big reason why being that the early votes can be scanned and processed before today. When the polls close at 7 p.m., they’ll be tabulated and sent to the Secretary of State’s office.
“I feel really skeptical” on whether this will happen for us, says a Democratic source with knowledge of both campaigns. “I feel this is a really hard thing to do for Democrats.”
The source adds if the two candidates get close, “it will be incredible because it’s not supposed to be possible” in Georgia, adding that what we’re seeing now is a testament to the shifting state and the two Democratic candidates.
A senior aide on Raphael Warnock’s campaign says the campaign is “under no illusions” about GOP turnout today. The Warnock campaign is expecting high turnout among the GOP faithful today and believes many waited until today.
A senior campaign aide for Jon Ossoff said their camp is “more cautious” than most national Democrats are being. “Republicans in Georgia turn out on Election Day and those voters consistently vote.”
The aide also said “we are weary of any claims that turnout may be low based on short lines,” pointing out Georgia has now run three elections in a pandemic.
The campaign believes the counties were well prepared this election and do not believe short lines and good processing times are an indicator of turnout.
UPDATE: A previous version of this post included a quote from an anonymous aide. That has been removed.
Republicans are pinning their hopes on steady turnout in key rural counties — and so far they like what they see. GOP operatives point to two counties in particular which are outperforming their pace from the November election.
Cherokee County, north of Atlanta, is on pace to eclipse the GOP’s target goal for turnout in that county. In November, President Trump won the county with nearly 70% of the vote.
Another county with above average turnout is Houston County, which is south of Macon and is David Perdue’s home county. Republicans are encouraged by the brisk turnout in the Senator’s home county. President Trump won Houston County easily as well with more than 55% of the vote.
Why this matters: The performance in these two counties mimics a trend they are seeing across the state, and has them encouraged that their election day get out the vote strategy is working.
The Perdue and Loeffler campaigns released a joint statement today on voting – encouraging all Georgians to vote in today’s runoffs.
Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue said they are “encouraged by reports of high voter turnout across the state – particularly so in North Georgia, where President Trump rallied Republicans last night,”
They also warned “this is going to a very close election and could come down to the difference of just a few votes in a few precincts across the state.”
Protocol for Covid-19-positive voters was used this morning in Wilmington Island, Georgia, about 15 miles east of Savannah. A married couple showed up on Tuesday morning to the Island’s Christian Church precinct to vote, after having tested positive for Covid-19.
The couple alerted a poll worker at the door. That poll worker then let the poll manager at the church know the couple had tested positive for Covid-19 and wanted to vote.
According to Chatham County Board of Elections member Antwan Lang, who was on site at the time, the polling place was emptied. The couple was then allowed inside to cast their ballots. Afterwards, the space was sanitized. The sanitation process took about 15 minutes.
Lang said that there’s been a Covid-19 protocol in place to ensure voters with Covid-19 are still able to vote since the 2020 primaries.
In an Atlanta drive-time radio interview airing this afternoon, President-elect Joe Biden said he is “feeling very optimistic” about the Georgia Senate run-offs today. He talked about how Covid-19 relief and vaccinations are part of what’s at stake in these elections.
“We’ve got to restore a sense of decency and honor and commitment to one another. We’ve got to unite this country that’s why I’m so excited about the prospects of Jon and the Reverend winning this thing,” Biden said in an interview with Kenny Burns on V103.
Asked what issues would be advanced if the Democratic candidates were to win, Biden said Congress would be able to pass $2,000 stimulus checks faster and provide more funding for vaccine distribution.
“I’m gonna need their help in making sure that we establish thousands of federally run and federal supported community vaccination centers of various sizes across the country, located in high school gyms or NFL football stadiums and we can do that by engaging….FEMA the disaster group and the CDC and the US military and national guard,” Biden said. He also outlined plans to deploy mobile vaccination clinics to rural locations and launch store-front vaccination programs.
“We can do this but it costs money and the inability of the present Republican leadership and Trump in particular preventing that from being made available to the states it’s just almost criminal in my view. and people are dying, people are dying,” he said.
Biden criticized the Trump administration over the slow pace of vaccine distribution, saying “the federal government has done virtually no planning.”
The President-elect also talked about Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ possible role as a tie-breaking vote if Democrats win in Georgia today.
“When Jon and the Reverend win, it’s a 50-50 tie. You know what that means? The vice president of the United states essentially becomes the majority leader in the United States Senate. She has the vote to break every single tie…so it gives the Democrats 51 votes, her vote, her vote.”
He also spoke about how Republicans senators in Georgia are pledging “loyalty to Trump, not to the people of Georgia.” He praised Republicans like Mitt Romney who he said “don’t want to be part of this Trump Republican Party, this renegade group.”
A new filing, mandated by a federal court order, shows that the United States Postal Service is largely moving completed ballots in Georgia on-time to count for the runoff Senate elections.
According to the data, the USPS moved the 942 completed ballots it processed between 92% and 96% on-time in its three districts which cover Georgia.
Mail-in ballots in Georgia must be received by poll close on Tuesday, with the exception of overseas and military ballots which have until Friday to arrive and be counted.
The overwhelming majority of ballots were mailed out to voters by election officials on Dec. 3, and the immediate days after, according to the data. It also indicates that on Dec. 7, and the five days after, the USPS processed the bulk of the completed ballots heading back to election officials. Since then, the numbers have decreased every single day.
Additional filings show that USPS is also conducting twice-daily sweeps for any ballots at processing facilities that serve Georgia.
USPS continues to experience significant delays with mail and packages because of the holidays and Covid-19, but they say they have been implementing the same extraordinary measures they had in place during the final days of the general election to speed up the on-time delivery of ballots.
Since Dec. 28, they’ve been utilizing measures such as Sunday delivery and “local turnaround,” which dramatically speeds up delivery by delivering completed ballots directly to local election officials, instead of them first going to a mail processing facility.
“Additionally, the US Postal Inspection Service and the Office of the Inspector General are in our facilities which process Georgia’s Election Mail throughout the region where they review internal practices within USPS,” Marti Johnson, USPS spokesperson, told CNN in a statement. “While in postal facilities, Inspectors review physical security of both the workplace and the mail to quickly identify and address and potential issues with election mail.”
Chatham County saw a record early voting turnout but today, officials are seeing slow turnout. For example, a polling station at the civic center in downtown Savannah is seeing eight to nine ballots cast an hour, CNN’s Martin Savidge reports.
The voter turnout for today may be lower than projected.
“The projection is about 40,000 that we hope to see today. But we may see a little less than that,” said Antwan T. Lang, member of the Chatham County Board of Elections.
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, gave a midday briefing to the press Tuesday. Sterling said that 1,018,382 absentee ballots by mail have been received so far, early in-person votes were in at 2,074,994, which means total ballots cast going into Election Day is 3,093,376.
A subset of that number is the Overseas and Military votes – there were 27,945 sent out, Sterling said, and they are working to get a list of the number received. Those ballots can be received and counted up until Friday. Sterling said he expected the office would “probably have that in a later briefing today.”
As of this morning, the state saw a few issues, mainly in Columbia County, which is located outside of Augusta. “They were addressed quickly,” Sterling said.
Two main things happened in Columbia County, Sterling said. First, an “i-button,” which essentially turns on the main polling place scanners, was not programmed properly in a percentage of the precincts. Secondly, some poll worker cards were not properly programmed which did not allow for the voter cards to be made or the ballot activation codes to be used, “so emergency ballots had to be used in that situation and they were put into the emergency bin of the ballot box.”
Sterling added that the average wait times they’ve seen around the state have been between 1 and 5 minutes this morning and the longest they are aware of were about 30 minutes this morning in DeKalb and Cobb County.
“It is steady but it is slow in many cases, so if you haven’t voted, we encourage you, please get out and vote. It is easy, simple, there isn’t a line in the way right now,” Sterling said.
Asked by CNN’s Dianne Gallagher about a report that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations is looking into “specific threats” when it comes to the election, Sterling said that local law enforcement coordinated to do sweeps but added, “We feel comfortable right now that voting is being done in a safe and proper way.”
Asked again if these were specific threats at polling places, he said “it was sort of a copy and paste email done to the several counties, it wasn’t individualized by any means.” He added that they don’t believe any voters or staff are in danger at this point.
Gallagher also asked Sterling about his last 18 hours since his press conference yesterday. Sterling said, “In this office, we follow the law, we follow the process and we defend the constitutional rights of American citizens and we don’t let anything get in the way and distract us from that, so that’s why I’m trying to encourage everybody to please get out and vote.”
Sterling said he did not watch President Trump’s rally in Georgia last night, but when asked if he has anything to say directly to the President, all Sterling said was, “We disagree.”
Georgians are voting in two crucial runoff elections today that will determine which party controls the Senate.
Incumbent GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are facing off against Democratic challengers Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
The stakes are hight for both parties – Democrats need to win both seats to force a 50-50 Senate that would see them gain control through Vice President-elect Kamala Harris eventually casting tie-breaking votes. If Republicans win either race, they will control the Senate.
CNN’s Ryan Young spoke to voters outside a polling location in Cobb County, Atlanta.
Watch the full interview below:
While the expected number of votes in Georgia’s Senate runoffs is off-the-charts, it is not expected to match the turnout Georgia saw during the presidential election, CNN’s John King says.
About 4 million votes were cast early in Georgia for the presidential election. The runoffs saw about 3 million early votes, 2 million of which were in-person and more than 966,000 were cast through absentee ballots.
The question remains: Voter turnout will be down but will it be down disproportionately to tilt the race in favor of the Republicans or Democrats?
Watch John King’s report:
As Georgia voters head to the polls today to vote in the Senate runoff elections, some US senators are planning for tomorrow, when Congress is expected to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Sen. Ted Cruz will object to the state of Arizona’s electoral college results on Wednesday, two sources familiar with the matter tells CNN.
A person familiar tells CNN this is not as much about Cruz questioning the election results as it is him reacting to the fact that he has not received the commission to study election results that he and his group of 10 other senators requested.
This is the second US senator to formally object. This means that in addition to Sen. Josh Hawley objecting to the Pennsylvania results, members will also be forced to debate the Arizona results as well.
It’s also worth noting that Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia is signaling she plans to object to Georgia’s results.
On Senate runoff election day in Georgia, Democrat Jon Ossoff told reporters that he, fellow Democratic senate candidate Raphael Warnock and a Democratic-majority Senate with the Joe Biden administration would immediately pass $2,000 stimulus checks and pass legislation for free Covid-19 testing and vaccines and improve vaccine distribution.
In response to CNN asking whether President Trump’s call to the Georgia Secretary of State was illegal, Jon Ossoff said, “It may be illegal, it’s certainly improper and disgraceful.”
Democrat Jon Ossoff is attempting to flip a Georgia Senate seat from red to blue in a matchup against Republican David Perdue.
Ossoff rose to political prominence during his unsuccessful bid for a Georgia congressional seat during a 2017 special election that attracted widespread national attention and huge sums amounts of fundraising revenue. Now he has his sights set on the Senate.
Ossoff is one of two Democrats attempting to flip a Senate seat in a pair of high-profile Georgia runoffs whose outcome will determine control of the chamber in the new Congress. The other race features Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her Democratic opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock.
If either Republican holds onto their seat, the GOP will be poised to maintain its Senate majority. But if both Democrats win, it would bring the balance of power to 50-50 in the chamber with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris able to step in and cast tie breaking votes, effectively handing the majority to Democrats.
The race between Ossoff and Perdue has featured intense attacks on both sides. The Georgia Republican has accused his Democratic opponent of pushing a radical, socialist agenda, while Ossoff, in turn, has painted Perdue as an out-of-touch Washington insider willing to sell out his constituents.
When Perdue declined to participate in a December debate, Ossoff showed up anyway and went after his opponent. The Georgia Republican was represented by an empty podium at the end and Ossoff fielded questions about his response to the coronavirus pandemic and used the platform to call out Perdue for not attending.
“The reason that our country has lagged the entire world at the efficacy of our response to this virus, the reason that we are losing thousands of people per day to this virus is because of the arrogance of politicians like David Perdue,” Ossoff said at the time. “So arrogant that he disregarded public health expertise, and so arrogant that he’s not with us here today to answer questions.”
While all eyes are on the Georgia runoff elections today, tomorrow the focus will shift to Washington, where Congress is expected to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
President Trump today is tweeting what could be perceived as his justification for Vice President Mike Pence’s role tomorrow, claiming that the Vice President “has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.”
But remember: This would be an unprecedented and legally dubious action by Pence to reject the will of the voters and select a different slate of electors – and it would almost certainly be rejected by both chambers of Congress.
Additionally, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and there is no evidence that electors from the electoral college were fraudulently chosen. Pence’s role on Wednesday in certifying the results of the election is largely ceremonial.
Last night, Trump appeared zeroed-in on the vice president’s role in certifying the 2020 presidential election results as a potential Hail Mary during a rally meant for a pair of Georgia GOP Senate candidates on Monday night, saying that he hoped Pence would “come through for us.”
Pence holds a largely ceremonial role when Congress affirms the Electoral College vote electing Joe Biden on Wednesday.
As focus turns on Georgia senate runoffs, Atlanta hip-hop artists Jermaine Dupri and Jeezy have been working to get voters to turn out.
“I had humble beginnings and I understand my influence,” Jeezy told CNN. “For the longest time, my culture feels like we’ve been alienated from politics. So now we have a say. So I just want to make sure we all understand that our vote counts, our voices count and our numbers count.”
A Biden-Harris supporter, he said Democrats winning the Senate seats is important for Biden to deliver on his promises for the Black community.
“At the end of the day, we’re not trying to split the world. We just need what we need as a people, and that’s it,” he said. “It’s about a particular group of people that need a little more tender loving care … Our neighborhoods are the ones plagued with crime, the ones people are evicted from their homes, the ones kids can’t go out to be safe because we’re not set up for that. So we’re just asking for the things that make sense for us.”
Dupri said the activism is not new to Georgia.
“We all have been active one way or another without actually getting paid to do this, without actually even doing interviews and all this type of stuff. It’s just something that we do in the city,” he said.
WATCH:
Republican David Perdue is fighting to keep his Senate seat in Georgia amid a challenge from Democrat Jon Ossoff.
Perdue, who was elected to a six-year Senate term after winning election in 2014, is one of two Republicans attempting to fend off a Democratic opponent in a pair of high-profile Georgia runoffs whose outcome will determine control of the Senate in the new Congress.
The other race features Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her Democratic opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock.
Perdue’s campaign has emphasized his close ties to President Trump and his business background prior to taking office in the Senate.
The Georgia Republican has accused his Democratic opponent of pushing a radical, socialist agenda, while Ossoff, in turn, has painted Perdue as an out-of-touch Washington insider willing to sell out his constituents.
When Perdue declined to participate in a December debate, Ossoff showed up anyway and used the platform to call out Perdue for not attending.
In the closing days of the race, Perdue went into quarantine after learning that he had been in close contact with an individual who had tested positive for Covid-19.
Today’s two crucial Georgia runoff elections are happening today — and they will determine which party controls the Senate.
You can catch up on the latest developments in the races and meet the four candidates vying for the two seats with the CNN Political Briefing podcast, hosted by David Chalian.
Listen to the four-part series focused on the Georgia races below:
Democrat Raphael Warnock is challenging Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler for her seat in a hotly-contested Georgia runoff election that will determine which party controls the Senate.
At the age of 35, Warnock was chosen in 2005 to lead Ebenezer Baptist Church, and has since taken on issues in Georgia like overhauling the criminal justice code, and expanding voter registration and Medicaid.
Loeffler has tried to portray her Democratic opponent and the leader of Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic church in Atlanta as too far to the left.
Warnock, in turn, has said that Loeffler wants to divide Georgia, and distract from her opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the health care insurance it provides amid a pandemic.
During a December debate, Loeffler repeatedly referred to her Democratic opponent as a “radical liberal.”
“Listen, I believe in our free enterprise system,” Warnock said after Loeffler asked if he would renounce socialism and Marxism.
Warnock, for his part, targeted the GOP senator over stock transactions that have been a subject of intense scrutiny for their timing related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Addressing Loeffler, he said at the time, “You dumped millions of dollars of stock in order to protect your own investments.”
Loeffler responded by saying, “I’ve been completely exonerated. Those are lies perpetrated by the left-wing media and Democrats to distract from their radical agenda.”
As Georgians head to the polls for runoff elections today, Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn shut down any prospect of impeachment after President Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a call to “find” votes to overturn the election results.
“It would be a waste of our time here in the House to pursue impeachment. I suspect if all that I heard on this tape is to be investigated, there could very well be criminal charges brought by state and local governments down there in Georgia…and I would hope that that would be pursued. That is something that can be pursued even after Jan. 20,” Clyburn said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“I would hope that the House of Representatives would spend its time concentrating on getting ready for this new administration and getting our House in order in order to deliver for the American people so that we can get beyond this pandemic,” Clyburn added.
During a rally last night, Trump also said he hoped Vice President Mike Pence would “come through for us” in the vice president’s largely ceremonial role in certifying the 2020 presidential election results.
“We know what the results are … For the President to be calling upon the vice president to do something to unravel this is just beyond the pale,” Clyburn said.
Watch Rep. Clyburn on New Day:
Resident Joe Swaney just cast his vote for the Senate runoffs in Smyrna, Georgia. A lifelong Republican, he said this was the first time he ever voted for a Democratic candidate.
While Swaney found the discourse leading up to this election has been “discouraging,” he says he tried to ignore it and focus on the issues that he cares about. Finally, it was about exercising his right as a citizen and making his voice heard.
“There’s a responsibility I have as a citizen of the United States to come out and exercise my right to vote,” he said Tuesday. “I know that the entire country is looking at Georgia right now as to what our decision’s going to be. So I needed to at least make my voice be heard.”
Watch Ryan Young’s Interview:
Georgia isn’t just the center of the political universe. It’s center stage on Wall Street, too.
The Peach State’s Senate runoffs will decide control of the US Senate — and that in turn will play a pivotal role in shaping the economic recovery as well as the investing environment.
“It is impossible to overstate how critical these races are for fiscal, tax and regulatory policy over the next two years,” Chris Krueger, policy analyst at Cowen Washington Research, told clients in a report Monday.
A sweep by Democrats would open the door to more powerful fiscal stimulus that the shaky economy may very well need. But it would also raise the risk of corporate tax hikes that investors despise.
Until recently, Republicans were expected to retain control of the Senate by winning at least one of the Georgia races.
However, the odds of the Democrats retaking the Senate have surged in prediction markets in recent days and weeks — a point that investors are just awakening to. If Democrats sweep in Georgia, they will effectively control the upper chamber of Congress, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote to break any 50-50 stalemates.
“Control of the Senate is a 50/50 chance in either direction,” Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James, wrote in a note to clients Monday.
Bettors on PredictIt, a prediction market, are paying just 55 cents to win $1 if the GOP keeps control of the Senate. That’s down sharply from 87 cents on Election Day and 75 cents in late December.
Given the “totally unprecedented nature” of the election, Krueger said, “the Georgia races are a “jumpball.”
Read more here.
Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler is fending off a challenge from Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock in today’s high-stakes Georgia runoff election.
The race is one of two Senate runoffs where Republicans are facing Democratic opponents hoping to flip seats from red to blue. The other matchup is between Republican David Perdue, who was elected to a six-year Senate term after winning election in 2014, and Democrat Jon Ossoff.
Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Loeffler in 2019 to fill the seat left by the retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson, and she was sworn in in January 2020. She is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and she is a co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.
Loeffler has attempted to portray her Democratic opponent as a radical who is too far to the left. Warnock, in turn, has said that Loeffler wants to divide Georgia, and distract from her opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the health care insurance it provides in the middle of a pandemic.
During a December debate, Loeffler repeatedly referred to Warnock as a “radical liberal,” while he countered by saying that he believes “in our free enterprise system.”
Warnock targeted the GOP senator over stock transactions that have been a subject of intense scrutiny for their timing related to the coronavirus pandemic. He accused Loeffler of having “dumped millions of dollars of stock in order to protect your own investments.”
Loeffler fired back, “I’ve been completely exonerated. Those are lies perpetrated by the left-wing media and Democrats to distract from their radical agenda.”
Incumbent GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are facing off against Democratic challengers Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in today’s runoff elections in Georgia.
Even if Republicans win both races, they will control the Senate majority with only 52 seats. If Democrats win both, they will eke out a 50-50 Senate majority with the tie-breaking vote of incoming Vice President Kamala Harris. A split would produce a 51-49 GOP majority.
That slim range of possibilities underscores a key change in the structure of Senate elections: With each party now consistently dominating elections up and down the ballot across a larger swath of states, it has become much tougher for either to amass a commanding Senate majority.
The fact that neither side will control more than 52 seats after Tuesday means that either party has held at least 55 Senate seats in only three congressional sessions since 2000.
By contrast, in the previous 20-year span, one party reached 55 seats or more in seven congressional sessions. In fact, the meager three majorities of 55 seats or more since 2000 represent the fewest times that any party has accumulated at least 55% of the Senate seats over a 20-year span since the turn of the 20th century, according to official Senate records.
The inability of either side to build a big cushion has contributed to a historic level of volatility in Senate control, with neither party holding the majority for more than eight consecutive years since 1980, a span of turnover unprecedented in American history.
President-elect Joe Biden said electing Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in Tuesday’s runoff elections would end the gridlock in Washington and allow a Democrat-controlled Senate to provide $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans.
“If you send Jon and the Reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks will go out the door, restoring hope and decency and honor for so many people who are struggling right now,” Biden said, making his closing argument for the Democrats at a campaign event in Atlanta on Monday.
“And if you send (Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler) back to Washington, those checks will never get there,” Biden said. “It’s just that simple. The power is literally in your hands.”
Biden’s declaration came just days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, rejected a bill that would have increased direct stimulus payments from $600 to $2,000.
Biden said the election of Ossoff and Warnock would “break the gridlock that has gripped Washington and this nation.”
Biden on Monday stressed the need for Ossoff and Warnock in the Senate in order to get Congress to fully fund the Covid-19 vaccine distribution efforts. He said he needed the additional two Democrats in Congress to further his agenda on jobs, health care, justice and the environment.
Biden’s campaign stop in Georgia came on the same day President Trump headlined a rally in Dalton, Georgia, to campaign for Perdue and Loeffler.
The appearances in the state came after The Washington Post published an audio recording of a stunning one-hour phone call in which Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn the election results after his loss to Biden. CNN also obtained an audio recording of the phone call.
The focus of the political world has turned to what’s happening in Georgia today for one key reason: the runoff election will decide which party controls the Senate.
If either of the incumbent Republicans — Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue — hold on to their seats, the party will maintain its majority control in the chamber.
If Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock both prevail, however, Democrats would gain control of the Senate, thanks to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.
President-elect Joe Biden campaigned in Atlanta yesterday, and Harris traveled to Savannah on Sunday.
The President-elect’s Monday trip to Georgia coincided with President Trump traveling to Dalton, Georgia, for a rally to campaign for the state’s incumbent Republican senators.
An average of recent Georgia polls show both races within the margin of error and way too close to call, CNN’s Harry Enten writes.
