Presidential, U.S. Senate race still too close to call
Published 9:04 am Wednesday, November 4, 2020
- More than 150 voters had cast their ballot at the Southeast Atlanta Library by 1 p.m. on June 9. One voter left in the morning after seeing the length of the line and returned in the afternoon to a wait that was much more manageable.
ATLANTA — The presidential race and one U.S. Senate race remain undetermined by mid Wednesday morning in Georgia.
Hundreds of thousands of ballots remain uncounted — especially in metro Atlanta counties, which is expected to turn out big for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
President Donald Trump leads Georgia by less than a percentage point, according to results from the Secretary of State’s Office. Trump has captured 50.47% of the votes, while 48.31% have been cast for Biden — a margin of about only 102,000 votes separating the two.
Around 1 a.m. Wednesday, Biden said “we’re still in the game in Georgia — although that’s not one we expected.” A little more than an hour later, Trump claimed it was “clear we have won Georgia” — at the time only about 118,000 votes separated the two candidates.
While the fate of the U.S. Senate special election was decided last night — U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock will be in a runoff — the winner of the other hotly contested Senate race is unclear.
Incumbent U.S. Sen. David Perdue is ahead of his young Democrat challenger Jon Ossoff by more than four percentage points. Again, many ballots have yet to be counted from the metro Atlanta area that is considered largely Democratic.
Neither Perdue nor Ossoff made remarks Tuesday night as votes were still being counted.
After relatively smooth voting lines throughout the day, counting was riddled with issues, including a burst pipe in State Farm Arena that delayed tabulating ballots. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told “Good Morning America” he expects all Georgia votes to be counted by the end of Wednesday.
“We’re working very hard on that,” he said. “By midday, we should be pretty much through it. Probably by the end of the day, we’ll definitely have it done.”
More than 4.8 million Georgians voted, he said, a new record in a presidential election.