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Raphael Warnock won the second round. If the second Democratic candidate also wins a Senate seat, Biden’s party would have the upper hand in both houses of parliament. Jon Ossoff has already declared himself the winner, the media continues to hold back with the forecast.
In the United States, Democrats say they also prevailed in the race for the second Georgia Senate seat. After steadily increasing his lead throughout the count, Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff declared himself the winner on Wednesday. With the second seat, the Democrats of the president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, would have the advantage in both houses of parliament.
Ossoff, 33, thanked the trust in a speech posted on social media and announced that he wanted to work in particular for a “stable” health system. By the current tally, Ossoff is just ahead of former Republican incumbent David Perdue (71) with a 16,370 vote lead and a gap of about 0.4 percentage points. The US media was initially reluctant to make predictions about the outcome of the second round of the elections, not least because several thousand absentee votes could come from abroad on Friday.
In the second round of Tuesday’s elections, Democrat Raphael Warnock managed to win by a narrow margin over current Republican Kelly Loeffler, according to US media forecasts. This came out on Wednesday morning (local time) from consistent forecasts from broadcasters NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN, as well as the AP news agency.
The count continues
It could take some time before both winners are definitively determined. Georgia’s top election supervisor, Brad Raffensperger, doesn’t expect further clarity until Wednesday noon (local time / night CET). “It’s very tight,” Raffensperger told CNN news channel. “Hopefully by noon we’ll have a better idea of where we are.” The count is expected to stop overnight, Raffensperger said.
The secretary of state pointed out that in addition to the thousands of votes not yet counted from various districts, around 17,000 ballots were expected, including from military personnel abroad, which could gain importance in the face of the close contest. The deadline for receiving these vote-by-mail documents is only Friday at 5 pm (local time / 11 pm CET).
Point the button in the Senate
Biden’s Democrats currently hold 48 of the 100 Senate seats. With Warnock and Ossoff victories, they would de facto seize the majority, because if there was a 50:50 tie, future Vice President Kamala Harris would have the deciding vote. The Senate has to pass almost every major White House political bill, like tax and immigration reforms. Senators are also tasked with approving important members of the Biden government team, from chancellors to finance ministers.
With a Democratic majority in the Senate behind him, Biden, who will move into the White House on January 20, could push his agenda, while with a Republican-dominated Senate behind him, he would have to lower his goals. At least until after the congressional elections in late 2022, the future president would have to act internally relatively toothless and be willing to compromise.
One example: Trump only achieved his far-reaching tax reform in 2017 because he knew that the House of Representatives and the Senate were in Republican hands. After Democrats assumed the majority in the House of Representatives after the 2018 Congressional elections, the political wind in Washington changed. Trump was barely able to establish significant national political accents in the second half of his presidency. He was unable to fulfill one of his central electoral promises, a health care reform.
On the razor’s edge
The runoff in Georgia was held because none of the candidates in the November elections got more than 50 percent of the vote. More than three million of the approximately seven million eligible voters cast their votes in advance, with voter turnout being particularly high in the democratic areas around Atlanta.
Georgia’s vote is not only so important because of the future distribution of seats in the Senate. It is also of great importance from the ideological point of view, because the candidates could hardly be more different. Filmmaker Ossoff, 33, and black pastor Warnock are on the left side of the Democrats. Conservative-funded commercials have been running across the country for weeks warning of a “socialist future for America” in the event of an Ossoff-Warnock victory.
Essential for Trump’s future
Billionaires Perdue and Loeffler, on the other hand, strongly back the president even after Trump’s defeat, both are considered ultra-conservative. Perdue worked for years as a senior manager, including for Reebok, before moving into politics. Loeffler made a career as a top banker, she is married to the president of the New York Stock Exchange, Jeffrey Sprecher.
The outcome in Georgia could also be decisive for Trump’s future: If the Republicans win, the president-elect can stick victory on their flags. If Perdue and Loeffler lose, the calls to end Trump’s reign will grow louder. A new candidate could be in position by 2024.
(Ag./stef)
