ATLANTA (AP) – Georgia officials began counting the final votes of the nation’s turbulent 2020 election season on Tuesday night as polls closed in two critical races that will determine control of the U.S. Senate and, in turn, the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
The two Senate runoff elections are leftovers from the November general election, when none of the candidates hit the 50% threshold. Democrats need to win both races to seize the Senate majority – and, with it, control of the new Congress when Biden takes office in two weeks.
Voting hours were extended less than an hour in a handful of precincts following a judge’s order. While voting was strong in some spots, state election officials reported light turnout early in the day, including across the deeply conservative region where President Donald Trump held a rally Monday night to encourage GOP voters to turn out in force.
In one contest, Republican Kelly Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate less than a year ago by the state’s governor, faced Democrat Raphael Warnock, 51, who serves as the senior pastor of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up and preached.
The other election pitted 71-year-old former business executive David Perdue, a Republican who held his Senate seat until his term expired on Sunday, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist. At just 33 years old, Ossoff would be the Senate’s youngest member.