RUNOFF: Georgia 6 Special Election
Updates as we have them
Citizens of Georgia’s sixth Congressional district flocked to the polls today to select a replacement for former Rep. Tom Price, who now serves as HHS Secretary in Trump’s administration.
Progressive Democrat, Jon Ossoff, hopes to pass the 50% threshold, which would allow him to avoid a runoff.
Everyone is mandate-hunting. Democrats desperately hope to take home a runoff-less win to prove America’s wholeheartedly rejecting Trump’s agenda.
From Fivethrityeight:
If the polls are right, then Democrat Jon Ossoff will receive by far the most votes in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which is holding a special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Tom Price on Tuesday.1 But Ossoff will probably finish with less than 50 percent of the vote, which would trigger a runoff between him and the next-highest finisher — most likely the Republican Karen Handel, but possibly one of three other Republicans (Bob Gray, Dan Moody Judson Hill) who are closely bunched behind her in polls.
Furthermore, the combined vote for all Republican candidates will probably exceed the combined vote for Ossoff and other Democrats, although it should be close. And the district has historically been Republican-leaning, although it was much less so in the 2016 election than it had been previously. All of this makes for a fairly confusing set of circumstances and a hard-to-forecast outcome.
If you’re looking for a broader sense of what’s happening in this particular election, Fuzzy had a great post last night. Link here.
I’ll be monitoring the race and will post updates as we have them. Refresh for the latest! Polls close at 7:00 EST.
Updates:
Still sitting here. Waiting for results. At this rate, we might learn how today’s vote went after the June runoff (if there is one).
12:03 AM: CNN Projects a runoff.
Just moments before CNN projected Ossoff’s failure to garner more than 50% of the vote, Ossoff addressed supporters at his campaign headquarters saying:
OSSOFF here in Atlanta: "We may not know the outcome for some time… but there is no doubt this already a victory for the ages.”
— Robert Costa (@costareports) April 19, 2017
“Victory for the ages.” $7 million couldn’t buy Ossoff a clean win, but it’s a “victory for the ages” y’all.
Ossoff will square off against Republican Karen Handel on June 20.
Political media reaction:
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Comments
They are keeping the polls open in a few counties, probably Democratic
probably
Democraticdemocrat.FIFY
Definitely not democratic.
They need time to print more ballots …
From what I heard today, this county is chock-full of #nevertrump GOP. Turnout was very low in Pres election. Judging by how many #nevers are still “concerned’ about President Trump, I’d say this might be a loss b/c they want to send a message. I mean, they wanted to see Hillary elected to send a message, right?
If pajama-boy wins, it will be fun painting him as the future for Southern Democrats.. scrawny, white male betas. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Have you ever seen the night news SO interested in a special election that didn’t turn the Congress?
Geez this is pathetic
The Dem at 71%
In early voting. With about 8k votes in. (Over 300k voted in this district in November.)
But Nate Cohn is now predicting Ossoff at ~61% on the basis of that result…
*shrug*.
We’ll all know tomorrow.
“But Nate Cohn is now predicting…”
Well, that means no way the pussy hat child gets 50%.
Nate Cohn couldn’t predict the sunrise.
Early returns, Ossoff was ahead big, but now rural results are coming in. Midnight central time and he’s showing 48.6%.
Can everybody say RUNOFF!!! Just like I called it!
Price as Sectetary was not worth it.
It ain’t over yet vale
What’s this about stolen voting machines? http://freebeacon.com/politics/voting-machines-were-reported-stolen-a-day-before-special-election/
Good grief. Twitter is doing a better job of tracking the election.
Runoff!!!!
http://www.businessinsider.com/georgia-special-election-6th-district-results-jon-ossoff-trump-karen-handel-2017-4
Stolen from Twitter: “Dems now stuck with a guy who doesn’t even live in the district going against a GOP woman in the GA-06 run-off.”
““Dems now stuck with a
guypussy hat child who doesn’t even live in the district going against a GOP woman in the GA-06 run-off.””I’ve corrected the twitter mistake for you 🙂
Dems and nevertrumpers lose again.
The RUSSIANS AGAIN!
“Ossoff (D) won 77% of mail ballots & 62% of in-person absentees.
But 3/4 of votes were cast on EDay & GOP won 58% of them.”
This reeks of fraud.
It might make sense if the D voter base were the ones that worked for a living and had more to do on election day other than vote, while the R base voted for a living, but that’s the opposite of what we actually have.
“This reeks of fraud.”
Simple test for fraud:
Is a democrat in the race?
I’ve been on my local board of elections for many elections. It all depends on the ground operation (GOTV) of whomever is at the top of the ticket (usually) or has the most money. I’ve seen them where a Dem had a great ground organization (Obama ’08), and where the GOP had one (Bush ’04). Obama/Romney had equal operations for absentee voters. It also depends on the demographics of the district – are there lots of elderly, or mobile workers/retirees? (We have lots of snowbirds here.)
Given the amount of money the Dem had in this race and how fractured the GOP side was, it does not surprise me at all that the absentee ballots cast heavily favored the Democrats.
It would be an even bigger surprise if fraud on the part of the
democratscommies did not occur.If elected, he’ll be the best candidate that money can buy.
Pencil-neck geek.
The fact that 52% of the voters went against the Democrat should be sounding alarms for them. Instead its more of the same disconnected from Real Life ™ bollocks we have been seeing for the last year from Democrats.
These clowns just cant get it through their fat heads…no one actually wants their petty, hate filled vindictive race based politics!
From here until the runoff, the Republican party problem is three-fold.
1) Find the Republicans that the voters *like* in that area and get them to give the Republican nominee a plug.
2) Find the Republicans that the voters *hate* in that area and get them to shut up.
3) Tie the Democrat to a position they’ve promoted but that the voters in that area don’t like.
Oh, and 4) crack down on absentee voter fraud, which certainly seems to have been a factor in this election. Thankfully, not enough to give Oss 50.00001% of the vote or all we would be hearing would be crowing and a push for immediate seating and impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Allow me to add a 5th factor, which actually should be 1st since this will decide the race. Is Karen Handel a good campaigner, and can she make the case to the voters in this district that they should vote for her? She starts with one big advantage in that she actually lives in the district, while Ossoff does not.
I’ve seen plenty of jungle primaries in Louisiana, which does all of its races that way, and the runoff election always has a different set of dynamics than the first. In the first election, there are far too many candidates and they are all going after each other, so people mostly ignore that and vote based on a lot of “big picture” concerns, including national politics. BUT – in the runoff, there are only 2 candidates, and now its personality vs personality, and people relate to that kind of race. So, in the runoff, the perceived characters of the 2 candidates matter far more, and national politics matter far less. I don’t know much at all about Handel, but if she can make her case to the voters, she can win. If she can’t, she won’t.
(this, btw, is why Republican Louisiana has a democrat governor right now, John Bel Edwards. In the runoff election, most everyone agreed that they liked Edwards, even if they didn’t agree with him, while most voters thought that Vitter, the Republican, was a total a-hole, even if they liked some of his positions)
Karen Handel has a lot of history in Georgia Politics and she is well known and generally well liked by Republicans. She was elected to one state-wide office and was defeated in two runoffs with Republican opponets. She ran against Nathan Deal in the governor’s race and was ahead of him in the primaries, but he came from behind to defeat her in the runoff. Deal used a lot of personal negative advertising and it was effective. In a race for the senator’s office, she ran into another swarm of negative advertising and was again defeated on a runoff.
This time she was running in her own home district and the negative advertising seemed not to effect her much. The runoff this time will be against two home folks. Ossoff is criticized for not living in the 6th district, but he is actually a home boy there. He grew up there and lives about ten minuets down the road, so the fact that he does not live in the district is of little significance. The 6th district in Georgia is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area and is populated by well-to-do and highly educated folks. Ossoff and Handel are both right at home there. If the Republicans do not get out the vote really well, Ossoff has a good chance of an upset in a Republican leaning district. In yesterday’s voting, the Republican vote total was a little over 3,000 votes larger than the total Democrat votes, and the Democrats made a well organized and well financed effort to get out their voters, and they were still out-voted.
I predict the GOP will shoot itself in the foot yet again by not uniting behind a candidate because “he/she’s not perfect”.
And you’d think Atlantans would be a little more sensitive about carpetbaggers.
Democrats were all over twitter shrieking voter fraud last night.
A faulty memory card in Fulton county was blamed on republican sabotage. Anyone who has ever had to deal with Fulton county government wasn’t even remotely surprised by the screw up. I once spent 15 months trying to get them to correct a 12K water bill.
Voter machines were stolen in Cobb county! Oh no, it’s republican dirty tricks! Looking further, we see that the machines were stolen from an employee’s pickup in Cobb county while he shopped at Kroger. Electronic equipment visible in a parking lot on Canton rd is an invitation for theft.
And my personal favorite: Republicans gerrymandered the district to prevent democrat votes! My only response to this is: Cynthia McKinney’s old 11th congressional district. Democrats shouldn’t even whisper the word gerrymander in Georgia.
Actually, Karen Handle fits in perfectly with this district. She is a moderate and not a bomb thrower. Some of you have a love for bomb throwers but not everyone does. This idiot Ossoff does not fit in with the people of that district and the only real support he got was from, out of state. This will be held by the Repubs and the Dems will say that the Russians hacked it.