[ad_1]
(Reuters) – A day after the Electoral College confirmed the victory of President-elect Joe Biden, he is scheduled to travel to Georgia on Tuesday to campaign for two Democratic candidates for the United States Senate whose January 5 runoff elections they could make or break your domestic policy agenda.
Just before Biden’s trip, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in Congress, ended his silence on the results of the November 3 election by congratulating Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. .
McConnell acknowledged his victory after six weeks of President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the White House contest. Trump has yet to acknowledge that he lost.
Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia underscored the transformation of the southern state from a Republican stronghold to one of the most competitive political battlegrounds in the country. The intensity was reflected in state election data showing 168,000 early voting in person on a rainy Monday compared to 136,000 on October 12, the first day of voting in person for the presidential election.
Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler face Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively, in twin races that will determine which party will control the United States Senate when Biden takes office on January 20.
If Republicans win either race, they will retain power in the Senate, allowing them to thwart many of Biden’s ambitious legislative goals on issues such as the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and climate change. A Democratic sweep would give Biden’s party control of the White House and both houses of Congress. Democrats already have a majority in the House of Representatives.
Biden makes his trip to Atlanta nine days after Trump traveled to Georgia in support of Perdue and Loeffler.
Trump campaign spokesman Jim Murtaugh said in a statement that Warnock and Ossoff “represent the leftmost fringe of the Democratic Party” and Biden’s campaign for them showed that he was under the influence of that wing of the party.
As in November, many voters are expected to cast their ballots by mail due to the pandemic. So far, more than 1.2 million residents have requested absentee ballots and more than 260,000 have already submitted them, according to the University of Florida’s United States Elections Project.
Biden’s victory has fueled Democratic hopes of capturing both seats, along with aggressive voter registration efforts and demographic shifts that have alienated the electorate from Republicans.
However, Perdue ran ahead of Trump in the November election and finished ahead of Ossoff, but just shy of the 50% required to avoid a runoff under state law. A candidate from a third party received approximately 2% of the vote.
The other race had a large number of candidates in November due to its special election status because Loeffler was named to fill a vacancy. Warnock and Loeffler finished in the top two positions, each well below 50%.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into the state from both political parties and a variety of outside political groups.
Both sides face turnout challenges amid the pandemic and without the polarizing Trump at the top of the ballot to garner votes from his deeply loyal supporters and also from detractors with deep animosity toward him.
Some Georgia Republicans have expressed concern that Trump’s repeated insistence, without evidence, that the November results were fraudulent could reduce turnout among his most ardent supporters.
Biden secured the presidency Monday after the Electoral College formalized his victory. Under US law, the president is not elected by a majority of the popular vote, but by the Electoral College, which grants electoral votes to the winner of each state as represented by Congress.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax, Jason Lange, and Simon Lewis; written by Grant McCool and Joseph Ax; edited by Colleen Jenkins, Peter Cooney, and Will Dunham)
[ad_2]
