The Democrats are suddenly leading in Georgia and the GOP should be worried

Both races that will determine control of the Senate considered tossups

On 5 January, or maybe days later if the presidential election is any indication, voters in the state of Georgia will decide who controls the US Senate.

Two crucial seats are at stake in next month’s runoffs after none of the senate hopefuls managed to win at least 50 per cent of the vote in November. Democrat Jon Ossoff faces off against incumbent Republican David Perdue, and Democrat Raphael Warnock against incumbent appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler. 

Georgia had been reliable GOP terrain for decades until Joe Biden turned the state blue in the presidential election, beating Donald Trump by 11,770 votes out of about five million ballots cast.

Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the vote was rigged. By inserting himself into a race that he just lost and essentially telling GOP voters that their vote doesn’t matter given that the results are “rigged,” he has thrown a monkey wrench into the race. The GOP senate candidates in November had more votes than their Democratic challengers. But with some calling for Trump backers to not vote at all in order to “prove” the conspiracy that voting machines are programmed for the Democrats, what happens now is anyone’s guess.

Currently, the races are viewed as tossups.

Unlike the presidential election,  state polls are released relatively infrequently and the sample of polls is much smaller.  There aren’t even recent approval ratings that often serve as a proxy for vote share. The approval of Georgia voters of both incumbents is in serious question given continued reports that both Perdue and Loeffler used insider information regarding the pandemic to profit from stock investments.

RealClearPolitics, which averages the polls, has the races both going to the Democrats, with Ossoff leading on average by 0.8 points over Perdue and Warnock by 1.8 over Loeffler.

FiveThirtyEight, which weights the polls for accuracy and adjusts them for perceived bias, has a slightly bigger lead for both democratic challengers, with Ossoff leading by a point and Warnock by two. According to FiveThirtyEight, polls have flipped five points in Ossoff's favor since Election Day and three points in favor of Warnock, increasing the chances for the Democrats.

Betting markets give the GOP a 67 per cent chance to maintain control. Note that a split verdict by voters will allow the Republicans to maintain control of the chamber by a 51-49 margin. But we’ve learned with the irrational betting in the run-up to the presidential election and its aftermath that the mostly white, male betting market is decidedly pro-GOP more than pro-money, and tends to bet with its heart.

While the general expectation with the candidates campaigning together on both sides is that both elections will break the same way, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver says the odds of a split verdict are higher given the expected narrow margins.

More than 2.3 million Georgians already voted a week out, a number that is viewed as very positive for Democrats, whose voters historically sit out non-presidential elections to a greater degree than their Republican counterparts.

Over 100,000 voters who didn’t vote in the presidential election requested ballots for the runoffs. A greater percentage of all early voters are black. So the GOP will have to make up more ground on election day in the runoffs than they needed to in the presidential election when they were unable to close the gap. Furthermore, about 23,000 teenagers throughout Georgia have become eligible to vote since November, when young voters in November accounted for 21 per cent of the Georgia vote (compared with 17 per cent nationally and 16 per cent in 2016); and they broke dramatically for Joe Biden.

Biden’s ability to get Senate approval for his administration appointments to cabinet posts and into the courts, as well as for his entire legislative agenda hinges on the outcome. A loss in either race allows current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block anything he wants.

According to the Washington Post, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris “will both travel to Georgia in the closing days before its pair of Senate runoff elections.” And Trump announced on Twitter that he will hold a rally in Georgia on Monday, though the GOP fears he will continue to air his grievances about his election loss rather than focus on Perdue and Loeffler.