Tag Archives: Jon Ossoff

GA Special Election Night and OT; Update: Warnock Projected to Win, Ossoff Leads but Too close to Call

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

The GA special election is being held today and the polls close at 7ET / 6CT / 5 MT / 4 PT.

The stakes are high for the election. Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News writes:

The stakes are clear, but the outcome is a tossup in Georgia’s twin Senate runoff elections Tuesday that will determine control of the Senate and the launch trajectory of President-Elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration.

Both parties have pulled out all the stops in the monumental clash between Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Almost half a billion dollars has been spent on TV, radio and digital advertising since the November general election alone, easily making these the most expensive Senate races in history, and both Biden and outgoing President Donald Trump campaigned in the state Monday.

Many pollsters sat out the race as they take stock of misses in November, but experts and limited polling all point to close contests that will come down which party can do a better job turning out its voters.

“Georgia, the whole nation is looking to you,” Biden, the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in decades, said at an Atlanta rally Monday.

What are some things to be looking for? The Atlanta Constitution-Journal suggests the following:

The polls are set to close at 7 p.m. ET on Election Day, and that’s when ballot counting can begin. Absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls to be counted. Military and overseas ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received by Friday will be counted, and absentee voters also have until Friday to fix any problems so their votes can be counted.

No ballots, including absentee ballots received in advance of Election Day, can be counted until the polls close. But a state election board rule requires county election officials to begin processing absentee ballots — verifying signatures on the outer envelope, opening the envelopes and scanning the ballots — before Election Day. That should speed things up on Election Night. Still, some absentee ballots received by mail or in drop boxes up until 7 p.m. on Election Day will still need to be processed.

WILL WE KNOW THE WINNER ON ELECTION NIGHT?

Just like in November, it’s possible Americans will go to bed without knowing who won. All indicators point to the likelihood of very tight margins in both races.

Media organizations, including The Associated Press, often declare winners on Election Night based on the results that are in, voter surveys and other political data.

But in a close race, more of the vote may need to be counted before the AP can call a winner.

Additionally, folks will be looking at certain counties, and especially at African-American turnout. Targetsmart, a polling firm NBC News is partnering with to examine the early vote posted this tweet last night:

Politico reports that the Biden camp is skeptical of the Dems prevailing there.

Privately, Biden’s team does not expect to win the races, according to Democratic officials, but they are more optimistic about their chances than they were weeks ago. Though the president-elect narrowly won the state in November, they attribute that to a powerful anti-Trump sentiment that did not translate down the ballot. Perdue received about 88,000 more votes than Ossoff, and the top two Republicans combined got more than 636,000 votes than Warnock in the special election.

Makes one wonder what the internal polling for the campaigns looks like.

AJC Runoff Election Results will be posted beginning at 7:30 p.m. NYT will be following it (based on the AP). MSNBC (who will bring out Steve Kornacki), CNN, and TYT also will have special coverage.

https://youtu.be/y5srrSSXAY8

Let’s go Ossoff and Warnock!

Update: courtesy AP via NYT:

Democrats fail to pick up any seats in special elections for Congress

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

We’ve had four House special elections this year. Democrats have lost all four. All four were tough races to replace Republicans from very safe districts who were appointed to posts within the Trump administration. In 2016, the Republicans were all incumbents, and their Democratic challengers were: Mike Pompeo (60.7%) won against Daniel Giroux (29.6%) in KS-4 Ryan Zinke (56.2%) won against Denise Juneau (40.5%) in MT-AL Tom Price (61.7%) won against Rodney Stooksbury (38.3%) in GA-06 Mick Mulvaney (59.2%) won against Fran Person (38.7%) in SC-05 In KS-04, an Independent and a Libertarian won almost 10% of the vote in 2016. First for the good news, … Continue reading →

6/22 News Roundup – Nina Turner On Running ‘Republican Lite’, Bernie As A Blueprint For The Future, Pipeline Updates & More

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

PAUL JAY: So, something like 23 million bucks was spent on the Ossoff campaign in a district where the median income is about $84,000. It’s been a Republican stronghold for decades since Newt Gingrich held office. True, Hillary Clinton did much better there, and Trump’s … during the presidential election than Democrats usually do, Trump’s ratings there, about 35 percent of people say they actually approve of the Trump presidency.

But still, in a district that sees lower taxes as the number one priority for them, and traditionally are wedded to Republican quote-unquote “values,” why pick this state to spend so much money? Like I said, 23 million bucks spent on Ossoff’s candidacy.

NINA TURNER: Only God knows. That really is a good question when the Democrats had a very real opportunity to invest some of that money into the race in Montana, for example. It just really makes no sense. And as you stated, I think Republicans have been winning that particular district, Georgia’s 6th district, since 1979. Romney won that district by about 23 points. So even though Mr. Trump … Governor Romney, let me just say that … even though Mr. Trump did much worse, that district is very much a Republican stronghold.

I think also the message was that people are not looking for folks to run “Republican lite.” Either you are going to run on the values of the Democratic party, be authentic about those principles and those values, or you’re not. But people don’t want a substitute for the real thing, and that is what Mr. Ossoff was doing. He was being a substitute for what a real Republican is, and that district is a very strong Republican stronghold, no doubt about it.

You can read the entire transcript here.

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