The high-stakes battle for the Senate

Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock has won a US Senate seat in Georgia, beating Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in one of the state’s pivotal January 5 runoff elections.

The race was called by Vox’s elections partner Decision Desk at 11:13 pm ET.

The fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda hinges on the outcome of two US Senate races in Georgia on Tuesday, January 5.

The Georgia races will determine whether Democrats can take control of the Senate — and, therefore, political power in Washington. With Biden headed to the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still in control of the US House, Democrats will control the executive branch and at least half of the legislative branch once Biden takes office later this month.

More than 1.4 million people have already voted ahead of Georgia’s two January 5 US Senate runoff elections, a sign that enthusiasm has not slowed down since the presidential election.

Those early vote numbers are on par with the historic turnout in the November presidential race, according to data from Georgia Votes, a nonpartisan website that tracks turnout in the state. At this point in the general election, turnout was around 1.5 million, according to the site’s tally.

Over the course of the Georgia Senate campaign, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) has repeatedly referred to her Democratic opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock as “radical liberal Raphael Warnock.” She repeated the phrase 13 times in a recent debate ahead of the January 5 runoff.

“The Democrats want to fundamentally change America, and the agent of change is my opponent, radical liberal Raphael Warnock,” Loeffler said during the debate, claiming that Warnock has attacked police and the American military “from the pulpit.”

A number of Georgia Republicans took the extraordinary step on Sunday and Monday of publicly pleading with President Donald Trump to stop claiming that some sort of massive election fraud enabled President-elect Joe Biden to beat him in their state. Trump wasted no time indicating he’s not listening.

“What’s wrong with this guy?” Trump asked, referring to Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Twitter Monday.

To win two hotly contested Senate runoff races, Democrats in Georgia need a lot of things to go right.

Georgia voters haven’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in 20 years, and Democrats handily lost the Senate runoff in 2008. But ask Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, and they insist things are different now. For one thing, the two Georgia races will determine which party controls the Senate — and by extension — political power in Washington, DC. For another, their party’s presidential candidate just won the state for the first time in almost 30 years.

In the days after two Georgia Senate races went to a runoff, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman went on CNN and seemingly encouraged people to move to the state to vote in the races.

“I hope everybody moves to Georgia, you know, in the next month or two, registers to vote, and votes for these two Democratic senators,” Friedman said, referring to Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, running against Georgia Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, a reliable if somewhat low-profile conservative, has won a second term in the US Senate. Sullivan spent the Trump presidency as a loyal Republican, voting in line with President Trump’s position 91.5 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.

That means Sullivan backed Trump’s view more often than high-profile conservatives like Sens. Chuck Grassley (IA), Marco Rubio (FL), and Tom Cotton (AR).

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis has won reelection, defeating Democrat Cal Cunningham after trailing in the polls for most of the year. It was an unlikely win made possible by a personal scandal that ensnared the challenger in the last weeks of the campaign.

Text messages from a woman with whom Cunningham acknowledged he’d had an extramarital affair were released in the press in early October. The polling tightened significantly in the last days, with a nearly 6-point lead for Cunningham shrinking to less than 2 points by Election Day.

Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff are headed to a Georgia Senate runoff after both candidates failed to clear the state’s 50 percent vote threshold to win outright.

Georgia now has two Senate runoffs, both to be decided on January 5, 2021. Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock in the runoff for Georgia’s special election Senate race.

Democrats defeated Republican senators in Arizona and Colorado this year, while Republicans gained a Senate seat in Alabama.

That means that Republicans will control at least 50 seats in the incoming Senate, out of 100 total, assuming Republican incumbents Sens. Thom Tillis (NC) and Dan Sullivan (AK) keep their seats, as seems likely. Both of Georgia’s Senate seats are likely to be decided in runoff elections in January.

Former astronaut Mark Kelly has defeated Republican Sen. Martha McSally in Arizona, securing a critical Democratic victory, according to a projection from Decision Desk on Thursday evening.

Kelly’s win means that, in just two years, Democrats have now flipped both Arizona Senate seats. In 2018, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s old seat. And now, Kelly has unseated McSally.

Ten years ago, Republicans routed Democrats in state legislative races across the country — gaining control of more seats than they had since 1928 and earning control of 54 of the 99 state legislative chambers, their highest total in 58 years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

State House races are extremely important every cycle — they can decide to expand Medicaid, pass restrictions on abortion, enact criminal justice reform, or any array of policy decisions. But every 10 years, their importance is magnified after the census is taken and they are tasked with the process of redistricting legislative and congressional boundaries (which can decide partisan control of state legislatures and the US Congress for the next decade).

Georgia could be on track to vote for its first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. With about 98 percent of the vote counted Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden is only about 0.07 percentage points behind President Donald Trump — and the remaining ballots are expected to favor the Democrat.

It’s striking that this traditionally conservative state appears poised to elect Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris, but the result is also notable given the state will be the site of two competitive runoff elections — featuring Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock — that could decide which party controls the US Senate.

The battle for control of the US Senate could come down to Georgia.

Both of Georgia’s Senate races will go to a runoff election to be held on January 5, 2021. With a small number of votes still to be counted in Georgia, particularly in the Democratic-leaning Atlanta suburbs, Republican Sen. David Perdue did not hit the 50 percent threshold he needed to avoid a runoff race with Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Democrats entered Election Day with high hopes of retaking the Senate and winning full control of Washington if former Vice President Joe Biden beats President Donald Trump in the race for the presidency.

But by Thursday afternoon, the election results presented only a narrow path left for Democrats. Both of Georgia’s Senate races appear destined to go to a runoff election in January. It seems likely Democrats would need to win both of them to achieve a 50-50 tie in the Senate; if Joe Biden wins the presidency, incoming Vice President Kamala Harris would then give control of the chamber to the Democrats.

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters will keep his US Senate seat in Michigan after defeating Republican challenger John James in the 2020 election.

Peters was one of two Senate Democrats up for reelection in a state that President Donald Trump won in 2016, and the race wound up being a surprisingly tight one. While Peters led in the polls throughout the race, James was able to close in on him in the final months of the race, and political experts thought there was a real chance he might win.

Update November 4, 4:30 pm ET: Our partners at Decision Desk have called the state for former Vice President Joe Biden.

Michigan is one of several states left uncalled for the presidency as of Wednesday morning — and the state’s top election official said results likely won’t come until Wednesday night at the earliest.

Longtime moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine proved her staying power — again.

Collins beat Democrat and Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon to win her fifth race for reelection, her toughest one in decades. Collins’s win demonstrated that there’s still room for moderate Republicans who broke with President Donald Trump, even though she’s one of the last left in the US Senate.

Democratic Sen. Tina Smith defeated Republican challenger Jason Lewis to retain the Minnesota Senate seat she took over from Al Franken following his resignation in early 2018.

Smith led throughout the race, though a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showed the contest tightening into a dead heat by October 21. Lewis was unable to campaign in the lead-up to Election Day due to an emergency hernia surgery and subsequent hospitalization in late October, but polling aggregations indicated he was facing an uphill battle even before that setback.

In the battle of Steves for US Senate in Montana, Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Daines has retained his seat despite a notable challenge from Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock.

Daines, 58, was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2012 and then to the US Senate in 2014. He currently serves on the Senate Committees on Finance, Appropriations, Energy and Natural Resources, and Indian Affairs. Before getting into politics, he spent much of his career in the private sector, first at Procter & Gamble and then at RightNow Technologies.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat representing New Mexico’s Third Congressional District, defeated Republican Mark Ronchetti to win the Senate seat vacated by retiring Democrat Sen. Tom Udall.

Most polls had Luján coming into Election Day with a significant lead, some even showing him ahead by double digits. The Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC dedicated to helping Democrats retake the Senate, reportedly bought $100,000 worth of TV ads to support Luján, all of which aired during the final week of the campaign. He also had outraised Ronchetti by nearly 6 to 1 by mid-July.

Republican Joni Ernst has beaten Democrat Theresa Greenfield in the Iowa Senate race, a huge victory for Republicans in one of the most important match-ups in determining control of the US Senate.

Prior to the campaign, Ernst seemed like a prohibitive favorite: a skilled incumbent who had won by big margins in 2014 and was well-positioned to take advantage of her state’s white, blue-collar, and heavily rural population. Yet the Trump-era surge in Democratic support among suburban voters, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Greenfield’s effective campaign combined to make the race tight.

Republican Roger Marshall will keep the Kansas Senate seat in his party’s hands, defeating Barbara Bollier in one of the year’s most surprisingly competitive campaigns.

The GOP Congress member staved off a strong challenge from the Democrat, whose hefty fundraising portended a close finish. Democrats had been gaining ground in Kansas during the Trump era, having won the governor’s race in 2018.

Georgia’s special Senate election is headed to a runoff, after Reverend Raphael Warnock did not clear Georgia’s 50 percent threshold for victory in his bid to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

Loeffler has not had an easy time the past few months thanks to the state’s “jungle primary” system, where candidates from all parties compete in an initial round, and if no candidate wins a majority, the top two head to a runoff. Rather than focusing on her main Democratic opponent, she had to fend off a conservative challenge from Rep. Doug Collins, a staunch Trump ally who kept the incumbent from moderating her message.