Nearly 76,000 Georgians have registered to vote for the first time ahead of the Senate runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate during President-elect Joe Biden’s first term.
Those voters, registered between the Oct. 5 deadline for the general election and the Dec. 7 deadline for the runoff contests, bring the state’s total list of registered voters to a record-breaking 7.7 million in the state, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. More than half, 56%, are under the age of 35. Some of those new voters turned 18 after the deadline to register for the 2020 general election. Others just moved to the state.
Georgia, long a solidly Republican state, will hold two Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, one race between incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, and Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock, and another between Sen. David Perdue, also a Republican, and Jon Ossoff. Should Democrats pull off a win in both races, the Senate would be evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, leaving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to break any ties.
So far, more than 2,600 voters have already cast their ballots ahead of the elections, the majority of which were cast in person.
Biden narrowly won Georgia by roughly 12,000 votes, clinching the White House and 306 Electoral College votes.
Georgia’s two runoff elections are the result of the state’s jungle primary-style elections — multiple candidates from each party run in the same race, and if a single candidate fails to garner more than 50% of the vote, the top two candidates face off in a runoff.
Warnock took 33.9% of the vote to Loeffler’s 25.9%, while Perdue grabbed 49.7% to Ossoff’s 47.9%. But with each race separated by tens of thousands of votes, and no more candidates splitting the tickets, an additional 76,000 could yield decisive victories in either race.
“Georgians learned on Nov. 3 that if they register and vote, that their vote has power,” said Seth Bringman, a spokesman for Fair Fight Action, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “If Georgians used their collective power, we could create change in our state.”
