Georgia Senate election results: Jon Ossoff declared runoff winner as ‘militia gathers’ at state Capitol
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Your support makes all the difference.Democrats took control of the Senate after Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler by razor-thin margins.
The victories were overshadowed by riots in Washington DC as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an effort to stop the count of the Electoral College votes declaring Joe Biden as president elect.
The chaos spread to Georgia as governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger were reportedly evacuated after a 'militia' gathered outside the state Capitol.
Mr Ossoff, 33, becomes the youngest man to enter the Senate since president-elect Joe Biden did so himself in 1973 while Reverend Warnock becomes the state’s first black senator and only the second black senator elected to represent a former Confederate state.
Their wins mean that both parties have 50 senators each, leaving the deciding vote in legislative matters with vice president-elect Kamala Harris and seeing Mitch McConnell deposed as majority leader.
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- Armed pro-Trump rioters breach US capitol as lawmakers shelter in place
Early results reflect low GOP turnout and no post-Trump bump after last-minute rally
The Independent’s Richard Hall has this dispatch from Atlanta:
The early story so far tonight is lower than expected Republican turnout. In more than a dozen rural and reliably red counties, turnout is running below 90 per cent compared to the November election.
This was not totally unexpected. Early voting was down in many of these counties for a while, but Republicans had hoped to make it up with a big election day showing.
Donald Trump travelled to Dalton, in northwest Georgia, on Monday night in an effort to fire up the base and get them to the polls. That deeply conservative district was one of the worst performing in the early voting.
That bump doesn’t appear to have materialised.
Things may change, but what we see so far will be uncomfortable reading for Republicans.
Democratic candidates in Senate runoffs ahead of Biden’s vote pace
Washington bureau chief John T Bennet has more on Georgia Democrats surpassing Biden’s numbers:
‘They attacked the Black church’
Democratic turnout for Rev Raphael Warnock is surging past Biden’s numbers. The pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr preached and where John Lewis’ funeral was held, was targeted in round-the-clock ads from Kelly Loeffler’s campaign and GOP allies attacking his faith and deliberate mischaracterizations of his sermons.
The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin wrapped it up:
With nearly half the votes in, Democrats have the edge
Well, that was fast.
With more than 40 per cent of the votes tallied, Democrats hold the lead, but the race is still too early to call, with outstanding ballots from rural counties and Republican-leaning areas in northern Georgia.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign sent out this text message: “Is it true that voting machines ‘stopped working’ earlier in Georgia today? Are Dems trying to STEAL this Election?”
(No, it’s not. And no, they’re not.)
Counties flip from Perdue to Ossoff
Republican incumbent David Perdue carried Washington County by nearly 2 per cent in the general election in November.
Tonight, Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff is up by more than 2 per cent, for a net gain of 4.
And now Baldwin County appears to be doing something similar:
A Republican loss in Georgia would ‘fall squarely on the shoulders’ of Trump, election official says
Georgia’s Republican voting system implementation manager told CNN that blame for a loss for Republicans in the state tonight would “fall squarely on the shoulders of President Trump and his actions” in the wake of his loss.
“Mr President, you’ve already lost the state of Georgia,” he said. "The thing now is, no matter what you say, you can’t undermine the people of Georgia’s integrity to know their voting system works and their vote is going to count.”
Cook Political Report says Warnock has defeated Loeffler
Within hours after polls closed, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman delivers the first “I’ve seen enough” of the night:
Despite grilling from Trump, GOP governor promises Georgia is ‘red wall’ from socialism
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp picked up the lines fed by Donald Trump and his sycophantic allies during an election night event, where he called the state’s GOP a "red wall that is trying to stop socialism in this great state.”
He has been the target of the president’s attacks after refusing to indulge in his election conspiracies following his loss in the state to Joe Biden, despite several recounts.
The Associated Press reports that a part of his 10-minute speech was devoted to Harrison Deal, a campaign staffer for Kelly Loeffler who died in a car accident in December.
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