Two United States Senate runoff races in the state of Georgia will go down to the wire tonight – with Republicans capturing one seat and Democrats claiming the other. At least that’s the projection of Atlanta-based pollster Robert Cahaly, one of the nation’s more accurate political prognosticators.
Assuming Cahaly’s crystal ball is accurate, Republicans would maintain control of the U.S. Senate by the narrowest of margins.
According to the latest polling from The Trafalgar Group – Cahaly’s firm – incumbent U.S. senator David Perdue is trailing his Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff by 0.9 percent. Ossoff is currently backed by 49.4 percent of voters compared to 48.5 percent for Perdue – who is seeking a second six-year term in office.
The remaining 2.1 percent of voters are undecided.
In the other runoff race, incumbent appointee Kelly Loeffler is drawing 49.7 percent of the vote compared to 48.4 percent for Atlanta pastor Raphael Warnock in the race to fill the remaining two years of former senator Johnny Isakson’s term.
That’s a 1.3 percent edge for Loeffler – with 1.9 percent of voters undecided.
For those of you keeping score at home, Cahaly’s latest polls surveyed 1,056 likely voters between January 2-4, 2021. The margin of error of the survey is 2.94 percent – meaning both races are definitional toss-ups.
That makes sense considering U.S. president-elect Joe Biden claimed Georgia’s sixteen electoral votes in November by a mere 11,779 ballots (0.2 percent of the more than 5 million votes cast), according to disputed official tallies.
How important are these elections? Very. If Democrats were to win both races – a distinct possibility – they would capture effective control of the Senate with vice president-elect Kamala Harris of California able to cast tie-breaking votes on their behalf.
That would give Democrats control over both the legislative and executive branches of government – although as we have previously reported the party is facing deep divisions in Washington, D.C. (as are Republicans).
What will Democrats do if they win both of these seats?
Radicals within the party want to pack the U.S. supreme court, defund the police, collect reparations for slavery, censor speech (and other liberties), open the border in perpetuity, further socialize the government’s health care delivery system and impose all manner of anti-competitive policies on the nation’s economy – including massive tax hikes.
Will Biden go along with these proposals? And what about vulnerable Democratic lawmakers?
Democrats lost a dozen seats in the U.S. House during the 2020 election cycle – and are likely to lose more with the GOP controlling the redrawing of districts ahead of the 2022 election cycle. The party is better positioned in the U.S. Senate in the coming election – although a hard tack to the ideological left could imperil that advantage.
Meanwhile, Republicans really need to win both of these seats – especially with U.S. senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine prone to siding with Democrats on high-profile tallies.
A split-decision would mean the GOP must hold every single one of its members in line on every single hot button vote that comes before the chamber – which we believe to be an unrealistic expectation.
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