georgia special election
All eyes are on Georgia ahead of significant special election
Voters in Georgia's 6th congressional district head to the polls Tuesday to vote in a special election between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel. On Monday, President Trump weighed in with an endorsement of Handel:
Ossoff will enter election day with surprisingly strong numbers for the heavily Republican suburbs of Atlanta: "If Democrats are to keep pace with their special election results so far, then Ossoff probably should be winning the race, not just coming close — and Georgia 6 should be the election where Democrats go from 'moral victories' to actual wins," FiveThirtyEight writes in its analysis. That being said, "Ossoff [is] ahead by a not-very-safe margin of about 2 percentage points." In other words: It's still anybody's race.
But as small as the victory might ultimately be, the implications will likely be read as massive by the defeated party. "This is a laboratory. In order to win the House back we have to win in districts that are gerrymandered for Republicans, so [special elections like this one are] laboratories for us to figure out what's the best way to mobilize this vote," Democratic National Committee Associate Chair Jaime Harrison told Politico.
What's more, "a loss in Georgia's special election here could leave the [Democratic Party] demoralized, with little to show for all the furious organizing, fundraising, and spending in a handful of congressional special elections in the early months of the Trump administration," Politico writes.
"This is a harbinger of national politics. The world is looking, the nation is looking — and all the money has flowed in here," former Republican Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.