Georgia Senate races that will decide fate of Joe Biden’s agenda too close to call

Democrats and Republicans were neck-and-neck in two critical US Senate races on Tuesday as votes were counted in Georgia contests that will decide whether President-elect Joe Biden enjoys control of Congress or faces stiff opposition to his reform plans. The leads swung back and forth, with Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler holding slight
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Georgia Senate races that will decide fate of Joe Biden’s agenda too close to call

Democrats and Republicans were neck-and-neck in two critical US Senate races on Tuesday as votes were counted in Georgia contests that will decide whether President-elect Joe Biden enjoys control of Congress or faces stiff opposition to his reform plans. The leads swung back and forth, with Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler holding slight edges on Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, and the Reverend Raphael Warnock, a pastor at a historic Black church in Atlanta.

With about 78% of the expected vote in, the Republicans were ahead with Loeffler leading Warnock by a percentage point and Perdue leading Ossoff by 1.6 percentage points, according to Edison Research. But in a hopeful sign for Democrats, about 670,000 votes remained to be counted in counties that Biden won in November, mostly around Atlanta, with about 300,000 left to count in counties that Republican President Donald Trump carried, according to Edison estimates.

An Edison exit poll of more than 5,200 voters found half had voted for Trump in November and half for Biden. The voters were also evenly split on whether Democrats or Republicans should control the Senate. The survey included both early voters and voters who cast ballots on Tuesday.

Democrats must win both contests in Georgia to take control of the Senate. A double Democratic win would create a 50-50 split in the Senate and give Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote after she and Biden take office on Jan. 20. The party already has a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

If Republicans hold even one of the two seats, they would effectively wield veto power over Biden’s political and judicial appointees as well as many of his legislative initiatives in areas such as economic relief, climate change, healthcare and criminal justice.

Warnock and Ossoff were each running about 0.5 percentage points ahead of Biden’s November performance in the 103 counties where at least 95% of the vote had been counted. No Democrat has won a US Senate race in Georgia in 20 years, but opinion surveys showed both races as exceedingly close. The head-to-head runoff elections, a quirk of state law, became necessary when no candidate in either race exceeded 50% of the vote in November.

Biden’s narrow statewide win in the Nov. 3 election – the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 – has given the party reason for optimism in a state dominated by Republicans for decades.