Georgia Senate runoffs live

Live commentary on today’s Georgia Senate runoffs. This post will also follow tomorrow’s certification of the Electoral College. Guest post by Adrian Beaumont.

8:18pm At about 3:40am Washington time, the Electoral College vote was finally certified. As expected, Biden won by 306 votes to 232.

8:15pm The last post was about the objection to Arizona. For Pennsylvania, 138 Republicans objected to democracy, with just 64 opposed. That’s 68% of House Republicans who objected to democracy. In the Senate, only seven of the 51 current Republicans objected.

4:20pm In the House, 121 Republicans voted to object, with 83 opposed, so 59% of all House Republicans that cast a vote objected to democracy, with Democrats unanimously opposed. The roll call shows that House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy voted to object.

2:15pm Despite the riots, six anti-democratic Republican senators have objected to the certification of the Electoral College. Their names are: Cruz, Hyde-Smith, Kennedy, Hawley, Marshall and Tuberville. Tuberville defeated Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama in November.

12:15pm In a YouGov snap poll on today’s riots at the Capitol, by 62-32 voters saw them as a threat to democracy, but Republicans disagreed by 68-27. Overall, voters thought Trump should be immediately removed from office by 50-42, but Republicans disagreed by 85-10.

12:07pm Ossoff’s lead now up to 0.8% or over 25,000 votes, with more Dem friendly votes left to count.

9:15am Not the most important news today, but US media have CALLED the Georgia regular Senate election for Jon Ossoff, who currently leads Perdue by 0.6% or over 27,000 votes. The Senate will be tied at 50-50, with Democrats making three net gains this election cycle. Kamala Harris will have the casting vote to give Democrats control of the Senate.

7:33am Since the November election, Trump and his henchmen have ranted about how the election was stolen. The violent protests in the US Capitol today are a direct result of these completely unfounded election fraud claims.

7:22am Trump supporters have stormed the US Capitol as Congress was supposed to meet to certify the Electoral College vote. Mike Pence will not attempt to overturn the results, and Mitch McConnell has condemned those who would object.

7:15am Thursday The vast majority of outstanding votes are in Democratic counties, so both Ossoff and Warnock will extend their leads.

9:11pm Ossoff now leads by 0.4% with 98% in. The projection is still for an Ossoff win by 1.1%.

6:24pm Some more of DeKalb is in, putting Warnock up by 1.0% and Ossoff retakes the lead from Perdue by 0.2% or 9.5k votes. The networks and the AP have CALLED for Warnock.

5:37pm Apparently there’s a technical glitch in DeKalb county that is delaying the count of votes that should put Ossoff over the top.

5:30pm A small turnout differential in Democrats’ favour was partly responsible for the result. Also, in November Perdue won by 1.8% while Biden defeated Trump by 0.3% in Georgia. There were a small number of Biden/Perdue voters who this time likely voted Dem.

5:26pm Compared with November, turnout was slightly higher in Biden and Black precincts than in Trump and rural precincts, but not much higher. Overall turnout will be about 90% of November levels.

4:40pm There are still votes remaining in DeKalb, which is only at 91% reported. When those votes report, Ossoff should take and keep the lead.

3:56pm Wasserman CALLS the regular Senate election for Ossoff. That gives Democrats two Senate gains from Georgia, and the Senate is tied 50-50. Kamala Harris will break the tie for the Dems.

3:40pm Perdue and Ossoff almost tied now, with Perdue ahead by a few hundred votes.

3:36pm Perdue’s lead down to just 0.08%.

3:30pm Perdue leads by 0.2% with 95% in, but there’s still more metro Atlanta left, while Rep counties are used up.

3:19pm A big Dem dump reported, and now it’s Warnock by 0.8% and Perdue by just 0.07% with 95% in.

3:10pm Despite a current Perdue lead of 3% with 91% in, the Needle has Ossoff winning by 1.0% with a 92% win probability.

2:56pm With 90% in, Perdue’s margin drops back to 2.6%, and the Needle has Ossoff winning by 1.0% with an 88% win probability.

2:47pm The Needle goes to at most 95% win probability, and Warnock is at that point. After that, it waits for official calls.

2:42pm While Perdue currently leads Ossoff by 3.0% with 87% reporting, the Needle thinks Ossoff will win by 1.0% and gives him an 81% chance to win. There are many more heavily Dem favouring votes yet to report.

2:17pm Ossoff’s win probability up to 76%, while Warnock is at 90%.

2:07pm The Needle has Ossoff’s win probability up to 73%, while Warnock is at 87%. If Ossoff wins, Republicans will be cursing the Libertarian who got 2.3% in November, denying Perdue an outright win.

1:55pm There’s still lots more votes left in Atlanta, which is why the Needle has projected final margins of Ossoff by 1.0% and Warnock by 1.7%, even though both Republicans are currently ahead in the raw vote count. Ossoff’s win probability up to 70%.

1:44pm Wasserman CALLS the Senate by-election for Warnock (D).

1:40pm With 78% in, it’s Loeffler by 0.6% and Perdue by 1.3%. But the projected margins are Warnock by 1.7% and Ossoff by 1.0%.

1:28pm With 69% counted, both Republicans have taken the lead, Perdue by 1.1% and Loeffler by 0.35%. However, there’s lots more votes left in the Dem-heavy Atlanta area, and the projected margins are Warnock by 1.6% and Ossoff by 0.9%.

1:09pm Just had lunch, and there’s been a big narrowing in the Dem leads. With 63% in, it’s Warnock by 0.6% and Ossoff by just 0.04%. However, the Needle is more confident in both Dems, with Warnock projected to win by 1.4% (68% chance) and Ossoff by 0.7% (60% chance).

12:42pm With 49% in, it’s Warnock by 8 and Ossoff by 7. The Needle has Warnock by 1.2% and Ossoff by 0.7%, with both Dems at around 60% win probability. There’s still a lot of election day vote to come.

12:25pm With 42% reporting, Warnock leads by 11 and Ossoff by 10. The Needle has both races tilting Dem, with Warnock up 1.2% and Ossoff up 0.8%.

12:22pm Wasserman has a good result for both Democrats from Washington county.

12:17pm Wasserman says that many very rural, very Republican counties are below 90% of November turnout. We already know that DeKalb will be over 90% of November levels.

12:11pm With 29% in, it’s Warnock by 4 and Ossoff by 3. Warnock has a 60% chance to win, Ossoff 57%.

11:56am Both Democrats up by 12 with 18% in, and both leading on the Needle by 0.5-1.0%. Both races now classes as Tilting Democrat, from Flip a Coin.

11:52am Dave Wasserman tweets that Republicans trail Trump’s numbers by a point or two in Lanier county with only 86% of November turnout.

11:45am Ossoff now up by more than Warnock (6 vs 3) with 11% in. The Needle has both Dems ahead by under 1%.

11:37am With 9% reporting, it’s Warnock by 14 and Ossoff by 12. The Needle still has both Democrats barely ahead.

11:27am Democratic counties are reporting far earlier than in November. It’s currently Warnock by 30 and Ossoff by 27, but the Needle has both Democrats barely ahead.

11am New York Times results available here, with a Needle for both races.

10:30am Looks like good turnout news for Democrats: DeKalb county (83% Biden) is at 90% of November turnout levels with an hour until polls close.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at the University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

After the November election, Republicans had a 50-48 lead over Democrats in the Senate. The final two seats, both in Georgia, went to runoffs that will be decided today. If Democrats win both of these contests, they will tie Republicans at 50-50 in the Senate, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would cast the tie breaking vote.

The FiveThirtyEight poll aggregate has both Democrats moving into slight leads, with Jon Ossoff (D) leading David Perdue (R) by 1.8% and Raphael Warnock (D) leading Kelly Loeffler (R) by 2.1%. Ossoff has gained 0.9% and Warnock 0.3% since Saturday’s article.

Polls in Georgia close at 11am AEDT. In November, the counting was slow in Georgia, with initial results strong for Republicans owing to a rural bias. The suburbs around Atlanta did not start reporting until late on election night.

Concerning tomorrow’s Congressional certification of the Electoral College, all I have to add to Saturday’s article is that at least 12 Republican senators will join Josh Hawley in objecting to the results.

On Sunday, Democrat Nancy Pelosi was re-elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives, winning 216 votes to 209 for Republican Kevin McCarthy. There were two votes for other candidates. Pelosi needed a majority of all candidate votes. As there were 427 such votes, she needed 214, so exceeded the required majority by two.

337 comments on “Georgia Senate runoffs live”

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  2. Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting systems manager, said it could be a couple of days before people start to see the final results in the state’s runoff elections.

    “If I’m a betting person — which I’m not — I would say it’s going to be a couple of days because I anticipate it will be a close race one way or the other,” Sterling said during a Tuesday afternoon news conference.

    He added the estimate was “as best as we can tell. If it’s a blowout, you know, who knows?”

    “We’re going to start getting results in tonight, we’re going to get the biggest bulk of them,” he said.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/05/georgia-senate-election-results-live-updates/

  3. Weather in Georgia today was cold (max 11C) and is down to -1C (31F) right now. I hope any older Republicans played it safe and stayed home 🙂

  8. Go Steve Kornacki! Voted one of the Sexiest Men on TV after the November POTUS election. They sold out of his pants after the election! 😀

  11. CNN are saying the exit polls are good for the Repugs. Great. But what about the 3+ million that voted early and don’t get involved in exit polls?

  13. “ CNN are saying the exit polls are good for the Repugs. Great. But what about the 3+ million that voted early and don’t get involved in exit polls?”

    The order in which they count the votes is pretty critical to obtaining a grasp of what is happening. Remember in the general election they counted most of the early voting (in person and mail in) in Arizona – which gave the impression of a democrat blowout, when in truth it was a narrow race. On the other hand they counted mostly in person – Election Day votes in the key swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania first and didn’t really ad in many early votes until very late that night or the next day. These counting patterns gave oxygen to the false allegations – but largely believed by republicans across the country – of vote rigging by the democrats.

    From memory Georgia was close on election night, with Biden still behind until the votes – both Election Day and early voting from Atlanta were counted.

    Given the pressure put on the Georgia election officials – all partisan republicans – by Trump over the GE (which they have courageously resisted) I wonder how they plan to count the votes this time around? Surely they would want to avoid either a Arizona type skew or a rerun of how the swing states counted in the GE: I seriously doubt that want to give Trump any oxygen for his false narrative.

  21. Its probably better for my blood pressure that I don’t watch the slow boil of results. 🙂
    A continual yes, yes, yes, oh, shit, shit, rinse and repeat

  22. The NYT needle is a predictive tool. It compares actual results to date with an initial estimate of how the candidates would be expected to perform, assuming a 50/50 split as the starting point. I’m guessing it’s a bit like Antony’s ABC election predictions. Last I saw, with 27% counted, it has Warnock up by 1.0% and Ossoff up by 0.7%

  29. True Asha. The unknown at the moment is how far votes cast on Election Day differ from the pattern on Nov 3. If they are more GOP leaning today than then, the Republicans can still pull it back.

  30. Nate Silver’s current assessment:

    Again, there’s nothing here that should make you feel like the race is in the bag for the Democrats — it’s going to be a long night, and we don’t have much info yet on the Election Day vote. But lots of small, bearish signs, like this one, for the GOP.

  31. NATE SILVER
    JAN. 5, 8:18 PM
    Again, there’s nothing here that should make you feel like the race is in the bag for the Democrats — it’s going to be a long night, and we don’t have much info yet on the Election Day vote. But lots of small, bearish signs, like this one, for the GOP.

    *shrugs*

  33. From the NYT:

    All that advertising seems to have worked for Republicans in at least one way: According to A.P. surveys, more voters see Ossoff and Warnock as “extreme” than Perdue or Loeffler.

    Democrats have got to start labelling them the Radical Right.

  36. NYT needle (adjusted for past results like Antony Greens’ reporting) shows both races ” tilting Democrat”. Warnock and Ossof 8% in front with 44% of the vote counted:

    Must resist temptation to break out champagne early.

    If our coalition masters/shills had any brains they would be dumping their coal stocks now.

  40. From Nathaniel Rakich:
    Taking a step back, Ossoff and Warnock both lead 55 percent to 45 percent with 43 percent of the expected vote counted. Given that local voting patterns still point to a very close race, that means that there probably isn’t a “red mirage” in the early results after all. As Laura pointed out earlier, there was simply no guarantee that vote-reporting patterns would be the same in January as they were in November. As it turned out, many of the big, blue, Atlanta-area counties dropped their results relatively early.

  41. From 538

    “Washington County is the first county so far to flip from Perdue in November to Ossoff today.

    Perdue carried it by 1.7% in November. Ossoff carried it by 2.4% today, so a net swing of 4.1%.” https://t.co/gWJv5VdVLH

    Ossof was slightly behind in November (<1%). A 4% swing would give him (and Warnock) victory. If that swing holds this will be a lot less close than the presidential count in November. Cue paper shredders going into overdrive in Washington (and Atlanta).

  42. With Senate control the Democrats can fix the Supreme Court numbers to undo McConnell’s court stacking. That might just be possible.

    As the percentage of vote counted increases that swing compared to Democrats counted compared to November of a tied race is a significant indicator.

  43. I’m assuming the early good results for the Dems are due to democrat-heavy votes being counted first?

    Kinda like the presidential election night in reverse?

  44. Looking at the https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/georgia-senate-runoff-election-results-2021/story?id=74588101 there is not much between the races when it comes to both candidates.
    Seems it’s very much just Democrat vs Republican rather than Ossoff vs Perdue and Warnoff vs Loeffler. Not sure this means anything much.
    Given the early counting during the November election favored the Republicans until the postals came through this can’t be a good sign assuming Georgia haven’t decided to change things in the meantime.

  46. Big A Adrian @ #43 Wednesday, January 6th, 2021 – 9:44 am

    I’m assuming the early good results for the Dems are due to democrat-heavy votes being counted first?

    Kinda like the presidential election night in reverse?

    Seems to be, portions of Atlanta reporting faster than they were expecting so there was never the red wave of republican on the day voters flushing through first. Although if the race is to tighten as everyone seems to assume there has got to be a bit of a red wave at some point.

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