Georgia’s Special Election Comes to a Nail-Biting Finish
Nearly 150,000 people have already cast ballots in early voting — nearly three
times the early vote in April, when only 193,000 ballots were cast over all.
Those early returns will be more Republican this time,
because nearly 50,000 Republican-leaning voters who cast ballots on Election Day in April decided to vote early in the runoff.
ATLANTA — Tuesday’s runoff between Karen Handel and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District will decide what has become the most expensive House campaign in history —
and quite possibly the most consequential special election since Watergate.
Yet as high as the stakes may be, the race to fill the seat vacated by Health Secretary Tom Price may turn on a simple question: whether the
Democratic energy opposing President Trump is enough to overcome the built-in Republican advantage in a conservative-leaning district.
The first returns — the early votes of people who cast their ballots at polling places, rather than on paper — will not be conclusive, either.
For all the early and absentee ballots already cast, the race is competitive enough that Election Day could prove decisive.
Nearly 40,000 people who have voted early in the runoff did not vote at all in April.
He could win by carrying just 3 or 4 percent of the voters who backed Republican candidates other than Ms. Handel in April.
And, perhaps showing how badly they need a lift, some supporters of Ms. Handel have seized on a liberal, anti-Trump gunman’s attack at a Republican
congressional baseball practice last week as a boon, thinking it could jolt at least some complacent voters into turning out for her.
