Polls for the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District close at 7 PM ET tonight, and what a remarkable, unexpected journey it’s been. Just a few months ago, almost no one imagined that Democrats could be competitive in a House seat that Republicans have held for decades. Yet now all eyes are on the Atlanta suburbs—and Democrat Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old investigative filmmaker and former congressional aide who has the chance to pull off one of the most stunning electoral upsets of all time. So how on earth did we get here?
First, let’s talk about what we can expect tonight. While many voters have cast their ballots today, voting has actually been underway for several weeks, thanks to in-person early voting stations and absentee balloting. So when the first results start to trickle in tonight, they will almost certainly reflect those early and absentee votes.
This is really important: Those votes will almost certainly be more favorable to Ossoff than the Election Day vote. We know this for two reasons. One, Democrats in general are more likely than Republicans to cast ballots early, and two, analysts examining early voting statistics have broadly concluded that Democrats have returned far more ballots in the early vote than they traditionally do in this district. So please, please don’t get overly excited by the first batches of votes we see, since later updates will likely tilt toward the Republicans. We likely have a long night ahead of us.
So what will the final results ultimately look like? In all my years of handicapping elections, I’ve never come across one as confounding as this. Special elections, as prognosticators like to say, are always special: Turnout is almost always lower than usual, and predicting who will actually show up to vote is much harder than it is for, say, a presidential race.
And making matters much more challenging this time is the fact that Democratic enthusiasm is through the roof, so much so that pollsters themselves have admitted they aren’t sure how to capture it. Still, we’re trying our level best. Daily Kos Elections aggregated all of the limited public polling available—and we’ll be honest: some of these outfits don’t have great reputations—and found Ossoff leading the way with an average of 42 percent.
That’s well below the 50 percent he’d need to win outright and avoid a June 20 runoff, but don’t take that number as any kind of gospel. Earlier this week, Politico reported that pollsters on both sides say that, if anything, they are likely underestimating Ossoff’s strength. If in fact lots of newly energized voters—the kind that pollsters are most likely to miss—show up at the polls, then a first-round knockout blow is indeed possible.
If, however, we do head to a runoff, Ossoff’s most likely Republican opponent would be former Secretary of State Karen Handel. Progressives know her best as the anti-abortion extremist who was forced to resign as head of the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity after she tried to get the organization to stop providing funds to Planned Parenthood—a move that turned out to be extremely unpopular. Handel’s been in second place in most polls, but she’s far behind Ossoff, taking an average of just 16 percent of the vote.
She’s also bunched right up against up against the rest of the GOP field, with fiercely pro-Trump businessman Bob Gray at 12 percent, and a pair of former state senators, Judson Hill and Dan Moody, at 8 percent. It’s possible that any one of them could emerge as the runner-up—though whether that prize is worth anything depends entirely on whether Ossoff can clear the 50 percent mark.
The fact there we’re even describing the race in this way is stunning in its own right. Price won this district by 23 points last fall; Mitt Romney did the same four years earlier. This should have been a slam dunk for Republicans. In fact, when we first started looking at this race, our chief aim was simply to make sure a Democrat could even make the runoff, period. Now we’re wondering if Republicans will!
But there’s no way we can tell this story without tooting our own horn—and praising this community to the skies. Shortly after Election Day, Daily Kos was the first to calculate that, despite this district’s long history of supporting Republicans, it only went for Trump by a slim 48-47 margin—a huge collapse from Romney’s win here in 2012. That result reflected the fact that this seat was both affluent and well-educated, which was the sort of turf where Trump struggled most.
That in turn suggested that, under the exact right circumstances, Democrats might—just might—be able to flip this seat. It started, though, with finding the right candidate, and that turned out to be Ossoff, who entered the race with a crucial endorsement from Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights legend and progressive hero. Lewis’ blessing helped convince us that Ossoff was the right guy, and so we too decided to back him.
And oh man did Daily Kos readers respond. In the first week after announcing our endorsement, we raised more than $400,000 for Ossoff, a sum that completely blew our minds—and shattered the Daily Kos record held by none other than Elizabeth Warren. The hunger to wage the resistance to Trump at the ballot box was palpable, and it kicked off an amazing positive feedback loop: Ossoff earned a big round of media coverage, which helped him raise more money, build up a national profile, and earn more endorsements … which in turn won him still more press attention, brought in more cash … you get the idea.
Ultimately, that resulted in Ossoff raising a mind-blowing $8.3 million dollars in the first quarter of the year—with an average donation of just $42—absolutely crushing the rest of the field and allowing him to go all-in on Tuesday’s primary, in the hopes of putting this thing to rest once and for all. Hopefully he will, but if not, don’t buy into the conventional wisdom that a runoff would be out of reach.
While Ossoff has benefited from the fractured Republican field, it’s also prevented him from going on offense. In a one-on-one race, though, he’ll be able to start landing blows against whoever his opponent is. Right now, Ossoff is bearing the brunt of attacks—millions of dollars worth—but we have yet to see how Republicans fare under the same kind of assault.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Tonight, we watch the returns, and hope for the very best. And we’re able to even indulge that hope because of you, the Daily Kos community. Thank you.
P.S. We will, of course, be liveblogging all the results as soon as polls close at Daily Kos Elections. Come join us!