If polls hold true, the election between Senator David Perdue and his Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff, next month will be a very close one because at this point, it’s anyone’s win for the taking.
Ossoff trailed Perdue in the November election by only 1.8 points, but a WXIA-TV poll released on Thursday put him ahead of the Republican incumbent by two points. It’s within the poll’s margin of error, so the SurveyUSA pollsters said the results should only be viewed as proof that “every vote will be critical” in the January 5 runoff election.
In many states, whoever receives more votes in the November election becomes the winner of the Senate seat. However, in Georgia, a Senate candidate must receive at least 50 percent of the votes to become the winner. Perdue came close in November, but he fell just shy of the 50 percent threshold at 49.7 percent, thereby sending him and Ossoff to a runoff election.
Perdue, who has been in the Senate since 2015, has a slightly stronger hold on his party’s base than Ossoff has on his, according to the poll. Ninety-six percent of GOP voters responded to the poll that they were going for Perdue and 94 percent of Democrats plan to vote for Ossoff.
Candidates have a chance in the next month to sway the 2.3 percent of voters who cast ballots for Libertarian Party candidate Shane Hazel, and in a close race, they could be the difference between Republicans keeping or losing control of the Senate.
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If Perdue or Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican incumbent who’s in a runoff election of her own, keep their seats, Republicans will have a slim majority in the Senate. However, if Democratic challengers are able to oust the Republicans, there will be a 50–50 split in the Senate. This effectively gives Democrats control because in the case of a tie, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will cast the deciding vote.
Both parties are dumping millions of dollars into the Senate race and deploying their resources to Georgia. President Donald Trump is expected to visit on Saturday for a rally promoting the GOP senators and celebrities have been asking people to get out to vote for the Democratic challengers.
It’s likely to only increase as the election gets closer because it’s not just the WXIA-TV poll that shows it’s going to be a hard-fought battle. A Fox5 Atlanta poll conducted on November 16 found Perdue and Ossoff each had 49 percent of support from voters and a poll from the Remington Research Group gave Perdue a 50–46 percent lead with 4 percent of voters being undecided.
While candidates and parties with a vested interest in the election will continue the push up until the last ballot is cast, early voting begins on December 7 so only a few days remain before the number of available votes starts to dwindle.
