Georgia Election Live Updates and Chat: Polls, Voting and Trump - The New York Times
Lisa Lerer
Expect early returns to show a G.O.P. edge, with conservative counties likely to report results faster. Democratic counties, including suburban Atlanta, typically take more time.
The race between David Perdue, a Republican, and his Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff, is the most expensive ever, drawing about $470 million when the general election and the runoff are combined.Virginie Kippelen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The winners of Georgia’s dual Senate runoff elections may not be known for days, but the battle is already one for the record books — with the November election and the January runoffs combining to occupy the top two slots on the list of most expensive legislative races in history.
All told, donors big and small have shelled out about $830 million to independent expenditure groups, party committees and the candidates themselves, according to an analysis of federal elections data and a summary compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Much of that cash, more than $490 million in the last two months of the runoffs, has been spent on television, digital and radio advertising, according to data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.
The race between David Perdue, a Republican whose Senate term ended over the weekend, and his Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff, is the most expensive ever, drawing about $470 million when the general election and the runoff are combined.
The battle between Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, is a close second-place finisher, with a $362 million price tag as of mid-December, when the most recent Federal Election Commission filings were made. These numbers could rise steeply when final tallies are released after the election.
A staggering 215 outside groups contributed to the Perdue-Ossoff race, contributing $271 million in all, with Mr. Ossoff out-raising Mr. Perdue by about $50 million. More than a hundred groups have shelled out a combined $171 million in the Loeffler-Warnock race, with Mr. Warnock enjoying a $28 million edge in fund-raising, according to the Center for Responsive Politics analysis.
The blowout numbers do not merely reflect the stakes of the Georgia race, or the expensive ad rates in the Atlanta media market: They also reflect a financial arms race focused on the Senate in which records were shattered in many states.
In fact, nine of the 10 most expensive Senate campaigns in the country’s history took place in 2020, the center found.
Stephanie Saul
In this campaign, David Perdue has downplayed his extensive dealings in outsourcing manufacturing to China during his career in the apparel and textile industries.
Senator Kelly Loeffler has strong Wall Street ties, starting with her husband, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, who directed $21 million to a pro-Loeffler PAC.
LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, co-founders of the grass-roots group Black Voters Matter, drove what they call “The Blackest bus in America” to Georgia communities with historically low voter turnout on Tuesday, including a stop in Lee Park in Jonesboro.
The two have spent years preaching the importance of local elections and engagement all over the South. “So much of what we do is about affirming Black people and pushing the concept of power, that it is something we can have and deserve,” Ms. Brown told The New York Times Magazine in a recent article. “We are rightful participants in this democracy.”
Mike Baker
Some trivia about the Rev. Raphael Warnock: He gave his first sermon when he was 11 years old. Here’s a closer look at the candidate and his background.
About 3.1 million people voted early, and that vote appeared to tilt Democratic. If another million people cast ballots today, Republicans believe they are likely to win.
Jan. 5, 2021, 4:55 p.m. ET
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. campaigned on behalf of Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock in Atlanta on Monday.Doug Mills/The New York Times
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday urged Georgians to vote and expressed continued optimism about unifying the nation, even as some Republicans in Congress push to overturn his election.
In an interview on WVEE-FM, an Atlanta radio station, Mr. Biden made a case for the importance of electing the Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, in the runoff elections on Tuesday for Georgia’s Senate seats.
“I need their votes in the Senate,” Mr. Biden said.
He said he was “feeling really optimistic about today,” and he made a simple request to Georgia residents: “Vote, vote, vote.”
Mr. Biden also made a pitch for Mr. Ossoff and Mr. Warnock in an interview with WFXE-FM in Columbus, Ga., declaring, “So much is at stake.”
The president-elect spoke a day after traveling to Atlanta for a drive-in rally with the two Democratic candidates. If both candidates win, their party will gain control of the Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as a tiebreaking vote.
In the WVEE interview, Mr. Biden said their election would allow for the passage of $2,000 stimulus checks, and he suggested that the two Democrats could help provide support for his administration’s efforts to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine.
Mr. Biden said he envisioned establishing “thousands of federally run and federally supported community vaccination centers of various sizes across the country” in locations like high school gyms and N.F.L. stadiums.
And Mr. Biden, who ran for president with a message of bringing the country together and working with both parties, stuck to that theme despite plans among some Republicans in Congress to object to certifying the Electoral College results on Wednesday.
“There are enough really decent Republicans — you’re seeing them step up now in the United States Senate — who don’t want to be part of this Trump Republican Party,” Mr. Biden said, citing Senator Mitt Romney of Utah as one example. “There’s a whole bunch of them.”
Lisa Lerer
Early voting returns worried some Republicans, who were not happy with the low turnout in conservative Northwest Georgia. They hope Trump’s rally there motivated supporters.
Stephanie Saul
At age 33, Jon Ossoff would be just three years over the minimum age for being a U.S. senator if he is elected in today’s runoff. His opponent, David Perdue, is 71.
Jan. 5, 2021, 4:22 p.m. ET
Georgia voters are choosing two senators in races that will determine which party controls the Senate.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesThe record number of voters who cast ballots early, either by mail or in person, helped control crowding at polling places.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesVoters lined up at the River Green Heritage Club in Canton, Ga., on Tuesday.Nicole Craine for The New York Times
Stephanie Saul
One thing to note: David Perdue is actually former Senator David Perdue. His term expired and the rest of the new Congress was sworn in on Sunday.
Jan. 5, 2021, 4:08 p.m. ET
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shot down President Trump’s suggestion Tuesday that a voting machine snafu in a conservative county near Augusta had compromised Republican votes in the Senate runoff elections.
“Reports are coming out of the 12th Congressional District of Georgia that Dominion Machines are not working in certain Republican Strongholds for over an hour,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, citing a report of glitches first reported by Representative Rick Allen, a Republican who represents the polling places in question.
“Ballots are being left in lock boxes, hopefully they count them,” added Mr. Trump.
Mr. Raffensperger shot back in his midday status report, saying that “a small number” of keys used to start voting machines had not been programmed properly and “a few” cards used by poll workers to activate touch-screen machines also had programming issues.
All of the issues “were resolved by 10 a.m.,” he wrote. “At no point did voting stop as voters continued casting ballots on emergency ballots, in accordance with the procedures set out by Georgia law.”
The singling out of Dominion by name in Mr. Trump’s tweet was noteworthy: The president has seized on conspiracy theories that the company switched votes to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November, a false claim that has prompted the voting machine manufacturer to threaten legal action against one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers.
Jan. 5, 2021, 3:58 p.m. ET
When Georgia’s Senate runoff polls close tonight, elections officials will begin reporting three sets of ballots: 2.1 million votes cast in person during early voting; 1 million votes cast by mail; and those cast at precincts on Tuesday — a figure that officials estimate could be anywhere between 500,000 and 800,000.
It is possible, though far from certain, that the Senate races could be called late Tuesday or early Wednesday. While it took more than a week for Georgia to be called for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., a faster count is expected during these runoffs.
Still, there will be little consistency to how Georgia’s 159 counties report their results. Some will post all of their early in-person votes, which have already been tabulated by voting machines, shortly after polling places close at 7 p.m.
The mail ballots are likely to be counted more slowly. Most of these ballots have already been processed, with envelope signatures and addresses verified. But the ballots have not been run through vote-counting machines.
Some counties will be faster than others to report their results. Fulton County, which is the state’s most populous county and includes the city of Atlanta, has a well-earned reputation for being slow at reporting vote totals. The county is already behind the state average in processing mailed-in ballots.
Statewide, 74 percent of mail ballots have been processed, but Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, has processed just 66 percent of its ballots, according to the United States Election Project.
In neighboring Cobb and Gwinnett Counties, suburbs that swung hard to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November, officials have processed 82 percent and 76 percent of their mail ballots — an indication that those counties will report results earlier in the night.
Other counties expected to be slow in reporting results include Henry County, a suburb south of Atlanta that has processed 57 percent of its mail ballots; Clayton and Forsythe counties, in metropolitan Atlanta; Chatham County, which includes Savannah; and Houston County, just south of Macon.
One big unknown remains the size of Georgia’s election day turnout. Though polls close at 7 p.m., voters in line at that time will be allowed to vote if they remain in line, which could delay results in some counties.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office, which said Tuesday afternoon that the average statewide wait time was one minute, will not report any turnout numbers until after the polls close. Officials with the Senate campaigns, political parties and outside groups working in the state had anecdotal data that showed a steady but not overwhelming turnout.
Stephanie Saul
If Senator Kelly Loeffler wins today, she will have to run again in two years. She is filling out the unexpired term of Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired.
Tyler Perry had described himself as nonpartisan, but he endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated Press
Tyler Perry, whose Madea franchise has made him among the wealthiest stars in Hollywood, hopped a flight from Wyoming to Georgia late Monday to vote in person after failing to receive an absentee ballot.
“All right, my absentee ballot never came, so I just left voting in person, so y’all get out and vote, get out and vote, get out and vote,” Mr. Perry said while sitting in his car outside an unidentified polling place in a selfie video posted on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon.
On Monday, Mr. Perry — who owns houses in California, Wyoming and the Bahamas but maintains his main residence in the Atlanta area, where he built a 330-acre studio — expressed concern that he would not get a chance to cast his votes in the runoff.
“Is anyone else having this problem? I ordered my absentee ballot on December 2nd. I’m told it was mailed on the 4th. I still don’t have it!” he informed his 6.4 million Twitter followers.
A back and forth with Stacey Abrams, a voting rights activist who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, ensued.
“Requested a ballot but haven’t received it? Vote in person on Election Day! Just tell the person at the check-in table that you wish to cancel your ballot & vote in person,” she responded.
“Hey @staceyabrams, I flew home because I didn’t get it. I will be there early in the morning. Too important to miss. Too important to miss!” he tweeted back.
Mr. Perry had described himself as nonpartisan, but he endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, suggesting that he felt the need to oust President Trump for the sake of his 5-year-old son.
Jim Rutenberg
Another contest is underway — between reality and fantasy, as Trump seeks to sow doubts about Georgia’s election system. State officials are rebutting his charges in real time.
Lisa Lerer
It’s a political cliché, but this election is all about turnout now. Democrats appeared to get the edge in early voting. Can Republicans capture enough votes on election day?
Jan. 5, 2021, 2:59 p.m. ET
Three of Georgia’s four candidates for the Senate — Jon Ossoff, Kelly Loeffler and the Rev. Raphael Warnock — made public appearances on Tuesday. The fourth, David Perdue, remained under quarantine after a member of his campaign staff tested positive for Covid-19 last week.
Jon Ossoff
Kelly LoefflerElijah Nouvelage/Reuters
Rev. Raphael WarnockLynsey Weatherspoon for The New York Times
Jan. 5, 2021, 2:42 p.m. ET
In the days after the Nov. 3 election, Georgia was one of several states where the vote count seemed to progress agonizingly slowly. Then came a recount. Ten days passed before the state was called for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., and even after that, there was another recount — long past the point when there was any chance of a different result.
But it’s unlikely that it will take as long to count the votes in the two runoff elections that will determine control of the Senate, which are arriving at the finish line on Tuesday. It’s even possible — but certainly not guaranteed — that we’ll know who won on Tuesday night, or very early Wednesday.
Two factors work in favor of a faster count this time around. First, fewer races are on the ballot, which means less work for election officials. Second, after the general election, the Georgia State Election Board enacted a rule requiring counties to begin processing early and absentee ballots at least a week before future elections.
Officials can’t actually count the ballots until the polls close, but they can do all the time-consuming prep work. That means votes cast before election day — more than three million, according to Gabriel Sterling, a top state election official — should already be compiled, and pretty much all officials will need to do Tuesday night is hit “tabulate.”
The new rule allows counties “to essentially do everything except hit the button to print off the total,” said David Worley, the sole Democratic member of the State Election Board.
If all goes smoothly, Mr. Worley said, “I would think we would have a pretty good idea” who won by 1 a.m. Wednesday.
The biggest questions are whether all will, in fact, go smoothly, and just how close the races will be. In an extremely tight race, results could be delayed several days while late-arriving ballots come in.
Jan. 5, 2021, 2:26 p.m. ET
A voter casts her ballot in Tucker, Ga., on Tuesday.Ben Gray/Associated Press
Voting is going smoothly in Georgia today, with election protection lawyers reporting no major problems with voting machines or extended waits at polling places.
“We’ve had minor issues,” said Helen Butler, executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a voter education organization. “For the most part it’s going quite well in Georgia.”
The record number of voters who cast ballots early, either by mail or in person, helped control crowding at polling places. Nearly 3.1 million Georgians cast their ballots before Election Day, roughly 40 percent of all the registered voters in the state, according to data compiled by the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project.
The longest lines reported to election protection hotlines were around 30 minutes, according to voter protection lawyers. Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the most common complaint reported to a hotline run by her organization was that some voters failed to receive mail ballots before the Election Day deadline.
“Many voters across the state availed themselves of the opportunity to participate in early voting,” said Ms. Clarke. “We are not surprised that we are not seeing poll sites flooded with large overwhelming numbers of voters today.”
Jan. 5, 2021, 2:01 p.m. ET
Getting out the vote during a pandemic is a complicated thing, but musicians seeking to make a difference have found ways to get creative.
In November, a group called Joy to the Polls mounted pop-up concerts at polling places in competitive states, bringing professional musicians out to perform for voters as they waited in line. And Joy to the Polls has stayed busy throughout the early-voting period in the Georgia runoff elections, organizing surprise concerts at voting locations across the state and especially in Atlanta, the unofficial capital of hip-hop today.
And Joy to the Polls isn’t the only group pulling artists together to try to drive turnout. A number have gotten involved remotely, with no fewer than three separate groups of musicians creating Zoom-style collaborative renditions of Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell’s classic song “Georgia on My Mind.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the actor and playwright of “Hamilton” fame, brought together a number of Broadway stars under the moniker Rock the Runoff to create a rousing, gospelly rendition of the song.Working in collaboration with the Biden campaign, Sunny Jain and a number of other musicians with South Asian roots created their own take on the song, with the lyrics sung in Hindi. The explicit goal was to turn out South Asian-American voters to support the Democratic Senate candidates.
And Lift Every Vote 2020, a group that has worked to register young and nonwhite voters across the state ahead of the runoffs, pulled together a team of A-list jazz musicians to record a coolly paced, laid-back version of the tune.
Jan. 5, 2021, 1:39 p.m. ET
NORCROSS, Ga. — The wind was not helping as Rosie Ramirez tried to take a selfie with a “Vote Aquí” banner flapping behind her. The peach sticker on her sweater declared that she had cast her ballot.
“It’s my country!” Ms. Ramirez said. “I came here to express my voice!”
The issue that concerned her the most was health care. Ms. Ramirez needs a liver transplant. “It’s very, very expensive,” she said. “I need good insurance.”
She said that she sometimes agreed with President Trump but was enthusiastic in her support of the Democratic Senate candidates, particularly Jon Ossoff, who she saw as young and vigorous. “It think it’s the best option,” she said.
Ms. Ramirez also believed that the Democrats might bring about a better tone. “We need unity in the country,” she said.
Lulu Miles agreed about the importance of health care in her vote. She retired after working for a hospital for 42 years, and the cost of insurance premiums were shockingly steep.
She also supported the Democrats, she said, because they could even the playing field. “Treat everybody equal,” Ms. Miles said. “Equal pay, equal employment.”
The past four years have been turbulent and full of negatives for many in the country, she said. But perhaps, she said, there was a silver lining: “Maybe something good will come out of it.”
Jan. 5, 2021, 1:26 p.m. ET
Jenny Catherall and
Gwinnett CountyBy Jenny Catherall and Arthur Thompson
Gwinnett CountyBy Jenny Catherall and Arthur Thompson
Gwinnett CountyBy Jenny Catherall and Arthur Thompson
Gwinnett CountyBy Jenny Catherall and Arthur Thompson
Gwinnett CountyBy Jenny Catherall and Arthur Thompson
Gwinnett County is one of the largest and most diverse counties in Georgia. We went there to find out how voters were feeling ahead of one the most consequential elections in a generation.
Jan. 5, 2021, 1:05 p.m. ET
Senator Kelly Loeffler and President Trump at a rally on Monday in Dalton, Ga.Erin Schaff/The New York Times
President Trump posted a pair of tweets 12 minutes apart on Tuesday morning that neatly encapsulated his presidency and me-first approach to the Georgia Senate runoff elections.
In the first, at 9:50 a.m., the president praised Kelly Loeffler, an endangered Republican who had initially declined to support Mr. Trump’s baseless challenge to the general election, for agreeing “to fight the ridiculous Electoral College Certification of Biden.”
Then, at 10:02 a.m., he gave Ms. Loeffler and the other Republican on the ballot, David Perdue, his most enthusiastic support to date after a week of suggesting his supporters might not vote in the runoff because the election was “invalid.”
“Georgia, get out and VOTE for two great Senators,” he wrote. “So important to do so!”
That was the kind of statement the two campaigns wanted two weeks ago. Instead, party officials believed Mr. Trump’s relentless claims of voter fraud had suppressed early voting in some Republican areas of the state.
Ms. Loeffler initially dodged questions about whether or not she would back a House and Senate challenge to the Electoral College’s certification of Mr. Biden’s win. But on Monday night — just before Mr. Trump appeared at a joint rally for both candidates in Georgia — she issued a statement saying she would “support the objection to the Electoral College certification process.”
Mr. Perdue’s objection is procedurally irrelevant — his term expired over the weekend — but Ms. Loeffler will remain in office until the winner of her race is declared, and she is eligible to vote.
Jan. 5, 2021, 12:43 p.m. ET
Voters casting their ballots in Marietta, Ga., on Tuesday.Mike Segar/Reuters
MARIETTA, Ga. — In the affluent suburbs of Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta, polling sites have had a brisk turnout. At one site, a government services building in Marietta, it was difficult for voters to find a spot in the crowded parking lot, but the lines moved quickly. Many other sites around the area also had at least a moderate level of turnout.
Cobb County is at the heart of Georgia’s political transformation, as parts of the state that Republicans had once relied upon have shifted to the left. Many here expressed a desire for change.
“We’re tired of this,” said Sony Tiggs, an account manager who moved to Georgia two years ago from Chicago.
James Roberts, 20, said he was ready for the Democrats to have a chance to lead.
“I think it’s time for change,” said Mr. Roberts, who works in a grocery store. “I feel like change is good.”
The New York Times
Brenda White, 49, said the runoff election carried enormous consequences. For her, it was more than a matter of partisanship, as she was worried about health care costs and the stability of the economy. “My future depends on who wins,” she said.
Ms. White voted for the Democrats, she said, because she believed she would be better served by them.
Republicans, she said, have held the two Senate seats “for so long, and I haven’t benefited.” She believed that her candidates had a strong chance of winning, her optimism buoyed by President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in November.
“I thought that would be impossible,” she said. “But they did it.”
But Carol Farrish, a teacher who said she voted for the Republicans, worried about Democrats holding too much sway. “It’s critical,” she said of her vote. “We need a balance of power so that one party can’t steamroll the other.”
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