Ossoff Declares Victory in Georgia as Democrats Close In on Senate Control

It’s taking some extra overtime, but it appears Democrats have taken control of the U.S. Senate—and they may have President Trump to thank.

Democrat Jon Ossoff declared victory in his hard-fought Senate race over Republican Sen. David Perdue Wednesday morning. And while some votes remain to be counted and a recount is likely, it appears Ossoff’s and Rev. Raphael Warnock’s leads over their GOP opponents are likely to grow, giving them victories and handing Democrats control of the Senate.

With more than 99 percent of the vote counted, Ossoff leads Perdue by 50.2 percent - 49.8 percent, a margin of more than 16,000 votes. That’s a substantial lead that’s likely to grow since the remaining vote appears like it will be heavily Democratic, but it’s within the state’s 0.5 percent threshold for a recount.

Warnock’s lead is even more comfortable, at 50.6 percent - 49.4 percent over appointed GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler—a lead of more than 53,000 that’s well outside the recount margin. 

The Associated Press has called the race for Warnock, and while they haven’t called Ossoff’s race yet, the reliable Decision Desk and Cook Political Report have.

Both apparent wins are historic—especially Warnock’s. The head pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King’s old church, will be Georgia’s first African American senator, and the first Black Democrat ever to be elected by a southern state to the Senate. 

Ossoff, 33, will be the youngest member of the Senate by eight years if his lead holds up, and the youngest Democratic senator since Joe Biden won his seat at age 30 in 1972, as well as the state’s first Jewish senator. 

And their wins will make New York Sen. Chuck Schumer the first Jewish Senate majority leader in U.S. history.

Their victories leave the Senate split at 50-50, with vice president-elect Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote.

Ossoff declared victory shortly after 8 a.m. EST Wednesday morning, joining Warnock in claiming the win.

“It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing to serve me in the United States Senate. Thank you for the confidence and trust that you’ve placed in me,” he said in a speech.

Perdue and Loeffler have both refused to concede at this point, however. Perdue’s campaign issued a statement shortly before Ossoff’s address promising to "exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots will be properly counted." Perdue’s team, like Loeffler, said they wanted to make sure “all legally cast ballots” were counted — the latest  insinuation that somehow Democrats might have stolen the elections after months of them following Trump in refusing to accept the legitimate results of the November election.

Trump did his party no favors. He refused to admit that he lost the state, and the presidency, lobbing increasingly aggressive attacks on some of the state’s top Republicans. That created a schism in the party and convinced most of his followers to doubt the election results — and may have convinced some that their runoff votes wouldn’t matter. He repeatedly lashed out against Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who had appointed Loeffler, and slammed GOP Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, baselessly claiming they allowed the election to be stolen from him.

The extent of Trump’s effort to bully Georgia election officials into reversing the state’s results was revealed when audio leaked earlier this week of a phone call where Trump demanded Raffensperger find enough votes for him to flip the state’s results. Even as he campaigned for Loeffler and Perdue on Monday night, Trump spent much of his time lying that he’d won the state while threatening to recruit a primary challenger to Kemp.

Republicans publicly fretted that Trump’s repeated claims that Georgia’s election process couldn’t be trusted might convince some of his voters to stay home. And while turnout on both sides was sky-high for a runoff, Republicans’ turnout dipped just a bit more than Democrats’ from November. 

It wasn’t all Trump’s fault, though. Perdue and Loeffler, both multi-millionaires, faced major scandals over their finances and questions about whether they’d used their perches in the Senate to enrich themselves.

Loeffler, appointed partly because Kemp thought she’d be able to appeal to suburban women and improve Republican’s performance with the state’s fast-growing minority populations, ran a race-baiting campaign against Warnock that repeatedly took his comments to his church out of context. Democrats believe that both helped spur Black turnout to historic levels and damaged her standing among college-educated white voters in suburban Atlanta.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell handed Democrats a late weapon in the race when he broke with Trump and refused to include $2,000 checks to Americans as part of the bipartisan coronavirus relief package. Warnock and Ossoff drilled Perdue and Loeffler for not standing up to McConnell, and promised that Georgians would get that money if they won.

In contrast to Trump’s mixed message, Biden did all he could to help win the races and get his party Senate control, campaigning heavily for both candidates.

Ossoff and Warnock appear to have won by driving massive turnout by young and non-white voters that smashed previous runoff records and ran up overwhelming margins in and around Atlanta and its inner-ring suburbs—as well as in Georgia’s Black-heavy rural counties.

The election shattered runoff turnout records, breaking a longstanding pattern where turnout collapsed in Georgia runoff elections. More than 4.4 million Georgians cast their ballots, including 3.1 million people voted early and by mail in the election.

Turnout was roughly 90 percent as high as the historically huge November general election turnout. Almost a half-billion dollars were spent on the races since November, making them the most expensive Senate races in U.S. history.

Their wins would give Democrats the Senate—but barely. Democrats lost key Senate races they thought they’d win in North Carolina and Maine in November, and lost House seats when they thought they’d expand their majority. Biden will enter the White House with the upper chamber deadlocked at 50-50, giving moderates like West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin inordinate power over any deals. Democrats have the smallest House majority in decades. And swing-state Democrats will immediately need to prepare for what could be a tough midterm election season, making it even harder to get much done.

But the victories will give Democrats unified control of government for the first time since the 2010 midterm elections. As he grapples with combating the coronavirus pandemic and digging out from the Trump era, Biden will have allies in control of Congress.