As President Trump continued to condemn the US Senate elections in Georgia as corrupt, Democrats took an early lead in the two runoffs as early voting ended on Jan. 1, according to an analysis of returns from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
While state law mandates that no ballots be opened before election night on Tuesday, Georgia’s largest paper said its review showed more ballots were cast by Democrat-leaning demographics and came from left-leaning parts of the state.
A record total of 3,002,100 early votes have been cast. Black voters — who generally support Democrats in the state by overwhelming numbers — are voting in higher numbers than they did in the presidential election, the paper reported.
Turnout in rural and more conservative-leaning portions of the state have lagged. President Trump is planning a last-minute rally Monday in Dalton in a last-ditch effort to rally the faithful to the polls.
And Trump continued Saturday to question the legality of Georgia’s voting.
“Why haven’t they done signature verification in Fulton County, Georgia,” Trump tweeted. “Why haven’t they deducted all of the dead people who “voted”, illegals who voted, non Georgia residents who voted, and tens of thousands of others who voted illegally, from the final vote tally?”
Neither of Georgia’s two incumbent Senators, Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, secured a majority of the vote in the 2020 Senate elections in November, forcing them both into runoffs with their Democratic opponents, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
Polling in the state has shown both races to be largely deadlocked.
Should the Democrats prevail, the US Senate would be evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, granting liberals de facto control of the chamber as Dem Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the tie-breaker on votes. The House of Representatives will continue to be ruled by a Democratic majority for the next two years. With Democrat Joe Biden in the White House, the Dems would control the executive and legislative branches for the first time since 2010.
As everyone sprints to the finish, Democrats have called out the party’s biggest guns — including former President Obama and Michelle Obama.
The former First Lady recorded a robocall for Warnock which reached voters on the last day of early voting and will be replayed again on election day.
“Hello, Georgia. This is Michelle Obama, reminding you that you have the power to change things in the upcoming Senate runoff election,” she says in the message. “I’m asking you to vote for Reverend Raphael Warnock, because I know he’ll work with Joe Biden to help make health care more affordable and together, they’ll finally take the coronavirus seriously, passing the economic relief Georgia families need and helping get people back to work.”
See: Betting markets see Republican win in Georgia’s crucial runoffs, while polls give edge to Democrats
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