The number of early votes cast in Georgia’s runoff election now exceeds 3 million.
As of Jan. 1, 3,001,017 early votes were cast, 2,072,948 of which were cast in-person, while 928,069 were done by mail, according to U.S. Elections Project. The Senate runoff races between Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democratic challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock and Sen. David Perdue and Jon Ossoff will determine which party holds a majority in the Senate.
Both Senate races are going to a runoff, scheduled for next Tuesday after no candidates received 50% of the vote in their respective races. In Perdue and Ossoff’s race, nearly 5 million people voted, and the incumbent Republican was 0.3% away from reaching the necessary threshold to secure his seat, according to CNN’s election data. Comparatively, nearly 1 million fewer people voted in Loeffler’s reelection bid, but she and GOP Rep. Doug Collins split the party vote leading to the runoff against Warnock.
If both Warnock and Ossoff lose their races next week, the Senate will be split 50-48 in favor of the Republicans. The other two seats are occupied by independents who caucus with the Democratic Party. If that happens, given President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s election victory, Harris would act as the tiebreaker in any party-line vote.
Both Biden and President Trump have campaigned in Georgia on behalf of their party’s candidates and are expected to go back to the Peach State before the election.
Georgia has also been in the political spotlight because of Trump’s efforts to question and delegitimize the election results in a handful of states he lost, including Georgia. In the president’s efforts, he has criticized Georgia’s Republican officials who have not supported his efforts. Supporters of the president, including attorney Lin Wood, have questioned why Republicans would vote in the runoff given claims of unsubstantiated voter fraud that he claims have not been adequately addressed.
