Both Georgia Senate races ridiculously tight; Democratic challengers favored to win

As I write this, it is almost mid­night in Geor­gia, the Peach Tree State, whose vot­ers are in the unusu­al posi­tion of hav­ing end­ed up with the abil­i­ty to decide whether the Unit­ed States should have a func­tion­ing Con­gress for the next two years or an obstruc­tion­ist Sen­ate con­trolled by Mitch McConnell.

Geor­gia law requires that can­di­dates receive a major­i­ty of the vote in the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion to win. If that does not hap­pen, the top two vote get­ting can­di­dates advance to a post-Novem­ber runoff.

In both of the state’s 2020 U.S. Sen­ate races, no can­di­date received a major­i­ty of the vote, whilst in oth­er states, Democ­rats knocked out two Repub­li­can incum­bents while los­ing one of their own. That left the Repub­li­can cau­cus with fifty seats and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus with forty-eight, with Geor­gia’s two seats alone left to be decid­ed before Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris’ inauguration.

Geor­gia has long been a solid­ly Repub­li­can state that votes Repub­li­can in fed­er­al races. It vot­ed for Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Rom­ney, and Don­ald Trump in 2016. But last year, Geor­gia vot­ers nar­row­ly backed Biden for Pres­i­dent, deliv­er­ing a long-await­ed tri­umph for Democ­rats in the South.

That vic­to­ry — which stunned Repub­li­cans — set the stage for these Sen­ate runoffs to be as fierce­ly con­test­ed as any fed­er­al elec­tions ever have been. Enor­mous sums of mon­ey were com­mit­ted to the con­tests and both sides deployed large armies of field teams to turn out their supporters.

So far, the result has been a near draw. With close to one hun­dred per­cent of the vote in, the can­di­dates in each race are locked in a near tie. Repub­li­can David Per­due has a slight advan­tage in his race over Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Jon Ossoff; Repub­li­can Kel­ly Loef­fler is los­ing to her chal­lenger, Rev­erend Raphael Warnock.

Over 4.2 mil­lion votes have been count­ed, yet nei­ther can­di­date in either race has more than 50% of the vote. And, remark­ably, hun­dreds of thou­sands of bal­lots are still await­ing tabulation/reporting, most of them from Demo­c­ra­t­ic counties.

The New York Times gives Warnock and Ossoff a more than 95% chance of win­ning, though Warnock­’s lead is tiny and Ossoff has not regained his yet.

That the Democ­rats could even make a pair of runoff elec­tions in a south­ern state this close is some­thing many polit­i­cal prog­nos­ti­ca­tors would have dis­missed as an utter fan­ta­sy just a few months ago, or even a weeks ago.

But as Joe Biden likes to say, Amer­i­ca is about pos­si­bil­i­ties, and that’s cer­tain­ly true of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. The real­i­ty is that what is con­sid­ered “real­i­ty” can be changed through hard work and strate­gic invest­ment. Democ­rats have always been capa­ble of blaz­ing their own paths and seiz­ing their own destinies.

Yet, only recent­ly has the par­ty start­ed to tru­ly embrace the notion of every race, every place and fund the year-round, big orga­niz­ing work required to allow the par­ty to prop­er­ly com­pete in elec­tions such as these Geor­gia Sen­ate runoffs.

Biden and Har­ris’ extra­or­di­nary vic­to­ry in Novem­ber was cru­cial in help­ing to lib­er­ate Democ­rats in Geor­gia and beyond from the kind of self-defeat­ing mind­set that has plagued them in the past. Instead of sim­ply going through the motions, the par­ty com­mit­ted itself to vic­to­ry. Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists did the work. Demo­c­ra­t­ic donors com­mit­ted resources. And Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers turned out.

Should Warnock and Ossoff suc­ceed in pulling this out, it will go down as one of the biggest tri­umphs in the his­to­ry of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

After lack­lus­ter per­for­mances down­bal­lot in the Novem­ber 2020 elec­tion, the par­ty will have risen to the occa­sion in the eleventh hour and secured for the coun­try a bare Sen­ate major­i­ty capa­ble of sweep­ing Mitch McConnell out of pow­er and allow­ing Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris to get their new admin­is­tra­tion up and run­ning more quick­ly than they would have been able to otherwise.

That’s still an if, of course. Pre­dic­tions and fore­casts are not results.

But Democ­rats have already proved some­thing just by get­ting this far in Georgia.