ATLANTA — In the final stretch before the consequential Senate runoffs, Democrats target growing voter demographics while Republicans rally President Donald Trump’s loyalists.

With the majority hold of the upper chamber and the course of President-elect Joe Biden’s administration on the line, candidates from both parties have been in a nonstop sprint to Jan. 5 since runoffs were declared in both of the races following the general election.

Republicans in both Senate races outperformed Democrats in the general election despite Trump losing by a margin of about 12,000 votes. But without the lame duck president on the ballot, incumbent Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler have been pounding pavement in rural areas of the state to ensure his supporters will turn out again.

Perdue received more Georgia votes than Trump in the general election, while his Democratic opponent Jon Ossoff, fell about 100,000 short of the total cast for Biden. After the crowded jungle primary to fill former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat, Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock will need to consolidate votes their other opponents won to be successful Jan. 5.

Following in Trump’s footsteps

For Loeffler, that means getting the backing of former Republican opponent U.S. Rep. Doug Collins who after he conceded. After his loss, Collins spearheaded Trump’s misinformation campaign pushing baseless election fraud accusations. The party tied a Republican victory in January to retribution for the loss of Trump — despite the conflicting messages that voters needed to turn out again for the runoff and participate in the voting system that the president claims was faulty.

In deep-red areas of the state, Loeffler has riled crowds with the call for supporters to continue “fighting for President Trump.”

“You have to exercise your right to vote that’s what President Trump said — we’ve got to get it done,” Loeffler told a crowd in Woodstock on Dec. 29. “The entire country is counting on us.”

Perdue’s campaign has taken a quieter approach to the trail and kept many of his stops under wraps or chose to select only a reporter or two to attend events. But at a rare metro-Atlanta event at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, the senior senator warned against voters choosing not to return to the polls for a runoff — a trend that is historically expected.

“I’m encouraging everybody to get out again,” he said. “Normally in a runoff — we don’t have a presidential race going in this runoff — there’s a drop off. We have a drop off, we could lose this race.”

In McDonough on Tuesday, WABE reported, that Perdue warned supporters again about not turning out: “We already beat (Democrats) once. Let’s not let them slip in because the President is not on the ballot.”

While the two GOP candidates are canvassing for votes by showing die-hard support for Trump — both even called for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s resignation over the handling of the election — some typically more conservative voters are backing the Democratic ticket not because they support the candidates, but because they are fed up with the president.

Atlanta suburbs resident Jon Paul Aultman, 31, is a Republican and typically backs GOP or libertarian candidates. But for the runoff, he’s counting his vote for the Democratic ticket as a vote against the GOP candidates.

“I think if this election ended, had Trump conceded, and then Perdue and Loeffler said, ‘Hey, Trump lost. It’ll be a Biden administration. We’re the check on Biden to make sure nothing goes too far left.’ Then that would be reasonable and I would have potentially voted for them,” he said.

“But just kind of seeing them go down this like seditious lane to me just is such a turn off that I’m really voting against them.”

A new Georgia

Still, there are not enough moderate or swing voters like Aultman for Democrats to focus on them. Ossoff and Warnock have targeted young and minority voters — growing demographics that pushed Biden across the finish line in the Peach State.

The shifting political climate of metro-Atlanta suburbs have given Democrats an opening to achieve a Democratic hold on the U.S. Senate.

“This is about where we go next as a people,” Ossoff said at an event in Lithonia geared at young voters. “We have better things to discuss than David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. We have the power to write the next chapter in American history.”

Using the slogan “Health. Jobs. Justice” and holding many events in tandem, the pair have highlighted Congress’ failure to pass COVID-19 relief and Georgia’s refusal to expand Medicaid as key campaign points.

“This is a defining moment in America’s history,” Warnock told a crowd in South Fulton County. “There are elections and then there are elections. We say all the time elections have consequences. But after over 300,000 American souls have perished. After seeing over 3,000 people die per day. After the devastating loss of lives and livelihoods and still witnessing the kind of dysfunction in our government, unable to move even now, to say elections have consequences feels like a gross understatement.”

After her absentee ballot was sent to her other home in Texas, Decatur resident Jenna Hanes, 24, flew home to Georgia to vote in the general election — a testament to how important the 2020 elections are to her. Hanes volunteered for Biden and Warnock this cycle.

“I’ve been really unhappy with how the country is being run the last couple of years.” she said. “I was unhappy with probably the last six years and struggling with the way our government is going.”

Hanes said she doesn’t necessarily agree with every single policy stance of the two Democrat Senate candidates but feels particularly drawn to Warnock, as a pastor, because of his experience with everyday Georgians.

“He has experience being a community leader as opposed to being a politician or running a corporation,” she said. “I think that that’s really important to be someone who’s a part of the community you’re representing.”

Ossoff and Warnock have been painted as “radicals” pushing a “socialist agenda” by their Republican opponents — Warnock a particular target of the attacks. 

Republican voters also cite Loeffler and Perdue’s messaging of the “American dream” as a sticking point of their campaigns and a reason why they don’t support a Democratic platform.

Roswell native Gurtej Singh Narang, 20, has been an active young Republican since high school and is now the state treasurer of the Georgia Association of College Republicans. A first-generation American, his family came from India in 1985. 

“The Republican Party was like the champion for every man for himself but everybody helps each other,” he told CNHI. “You work hard to get where you’re at without having someone spoon feed you the entire way. That is the attitude, the approach of the the Republican party.”

Singh Narang said he worries about total control of Democrats over all the branches of government.

“That’s one of the things that hangs in the balance,” he said. “Our future generations’ chance to live in a Republican country and with Republican values.”