WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans are looking towards two potential runoffs in Georgia to determine control of the U.S. Senate.
Democratic challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock and incumbent Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler will be heading to a runoff election on Jan. 5 because neither of the two won more than 50% of the vote in a race that had 12 candidates on the ballot. State law requires a run-off election between the top two vote-getters if neither won 50% of the vote.
In the second Senate race, GOP Sen. David Perdue is barely at 50% over Democrat Jon Ossoff, with about 96% of the vote counted.
There are two Senate seats up for grabs because Loeffler was appointed to her seat last year after Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned, but had to run for a full-term this year.
University of George political science professor Charles Bullock III said the run-offs are a result of the changing demographics of Georgia, moving the normally reliably Republican state toward the Democrats.
“It’s not necessarily your father’s or your grandfather’s Georgia anymore,” said Bullock. “The state is one of the fastest growing states in the nation and the people who are coming to Georgia are ethnically diverse.”
Warnock earned 31% of the total vote, taking first place over Loeffler’s 26% and Georgia GOP Rep. Doug Collins, with 20%.
“If (Warnock) could simply unite the Democratic Party, then he was guaranteed and making it into the runoff. And he was reasonably successful in doing that,” said Bullock. “His opponents were fighting for the Republican share of the vote, and they carved each other up pretty badly.”
Bullock added that for both Warnock and Loeffler, the focus now becomes getting their voters to come back to the polls in January – a feat Democrats have not been able to successfully do in runoff challenges.
Asides from these races, Senate races in North Carolina and Alaska have yet to be called.
In North Carolina, incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis, the Republican, leads Democrat Cal Cunningham by two points. At a press conference on Wednesday, Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said that absentee ballots will not be counted until Nov. 12 and they must have been postmarked on or before Election Day.
In Alaska, incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan currently leads independent candidate Dr. Al Gross, but absentee ballots will not be counted until Nov. 10.
Tiffany Montemayor, spokeswoman for the Alaska Division of Elections, said that the delay in counting absentee ballots is to ensure election accuracy.
“We don’t want any duplicate voting. And so we wait until all of the in-person on Election Day votes are counted. And then we have to pick the registers, log those names in of the people who voted in person so that we can run a voter history,” said Montemayor. “That way when we do start counting the absentee ballots, if somebody voted twice that will be flagged, and we can, you know, fix that.”