Biden’s D-Day in Senate contest
Dems’ good showing
ATLANTA: The two crucial Georgia run-off elections were both going down to the wire on Tuesday, with neither side sure who will end up controlling the Senate.
The hard-fought races have brought the global spotlight onto this southern state, nine weeks after the most dramatic US election in two decades.
Democrats need both their candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, to prevail in order to snatch the Senate from the Republicans.
Outgoing President Donald Trump’s Republican party needs either Kelly Loeffler or David Perdue to hold their seat to preserve its majority.
As it stands, there are 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats in the 100-seat Senate. If the two sides end up with the same number of senators, the vice-president — in this case Kamala Harris, a Democrat — has the deciding vote.
With more than threequarters of Georgia precincts reporting, the two races were within a percentage point.
Both Republicans were narrowly ahead, but US media reported that many of the outstanding votes were in metropolitan Atlanta, a major Democratic stronghold.
That was enough for Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar to declare: “Georgia will make history again.”
“Wow, I think we’re gonna win,” tweeted Rufus Gifford, a former ambassador who was deputy head of president-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
Georgia officials have said the results may not be known until Thursday (AEDT) or later.
“Georgia, the nation is looking to you to lead us forward,” Mr Biden tweeted.
The elections come during a week of high political tensions, with Mr Trump still desperately scheming to try to reverse his election loss.
On Thursday (AEDT), Vice-President Mike Pence is set to preside over a joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote that confirmed Mr Biden as the winner of the White House.
Mr Trump is planning to address a rally near the White House in protest at the certification, with hundreds of supporters in red “Make America Great Again” caps already gathering in the capital amid a heavy police presence, as shop owners, fearing unrest, boarded up their windows.
Mr Trump has urged Mr Pence to “reject fraudulently chosen electors” — a move the Vice-President has no legal authority to make — while dozens of House Republicans and 12 Senate Republicans have separately said they will raise objections to certification, a move doomed to fail.
Mr Biden beat Mr Trump in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes in November, but the run-off odds are not in the Democrats’ favour. Republicans have won all eight statewide run-offs since 1992.
Democrats led the early voting in Georgia and nationwide in November, and the expectation is that they did so again in the run-offs, in which a record 3 million-plus people voted early amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Voting figures show Republicans, more than Democrats, tend to prefer casting ballots in person on election day.