Related video: Georgia election official debunks one Trump conspiracy theory after another
More than 3 million early votes have been cast in an elections expected to see record turnout for a runoff races.
Georgia Secretary of state Brad Raffensperger has said he does not expect final results to become clear until Wednesday morning, while the Loeffler campaign has found itself caught up in a late racism scandal over an attack ad that appeared on Facebook in which the skin colour of Reverend Warnock, who is Black, appeared to have been made artificially darker.
President-elect Joe Biden was campaigning for the Democrats on Monday evening, promising voters that their victories would mean a blue takeover of the Senate and thus the chance to upgrade Covid-19 relief cheques for Americans from the current $600 to $2,000, a move staunchly opposed by current Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. The president-elect also made an Election Day appeal on Georgia radio, telling voters that “so much is at stake.”
The president has meanwhile continued to amplify election fraud conspiracies as he pushes for GOP candidates, telling his followers that “emboldened Radical Left Democrats” have sought to steal “victory” from Republican voters.
Check out The Independent’s live coverage and analysis below.
With less than 13 per cent of the vote in, here’s a look at Atlanta
(Georgia Secretary of State)
Fulton County, which includes the Atlanta area, has Raphael Warnock up by more than 60 points, with roughly 13 per cent of the vote in.
That’s a much larger margin than Biden over Trump, who received 26 per cent of the vote to Biden’s 72 per cent.
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 01:23
All polls in Georgia have now closed
Just one poll remained open until 8pm tonight. So now we wait.
More than 1 million votes have been reported.
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 01:15
Early votes for Democrats more than double Republicans
As results trickle in (at about 6 per cent so far, folks), the absentee and early in-person vote tallies capture how much of a surge Democrats got from the early voting perdiod.
Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have roughly twice as many early votes than their Republican counterparts. That lead starts to thin as election day votes from across the state paint a more complete picture. (Within the hour after polls closed, the Democrats have captured roughly 54 per cent of the vote, based on less than 7 per cent of total ballots counted.)
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 01:11
GA GOP bars reporters from election night HQ
Georgia’s Republican Party has barred Georgia Public Broadcasting from covering its election night headquarters.
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 00:57
‘Total control’: Fear of a socialist takeover of America drives some Republicans to the polls in Georgia runoffs
The Independent’s Richard Hall, reporting from Georgia:
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 00:47
As expected, Democratic candidates get larger early vote turnout
Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have received a huge boost from early voting turnout, according to Georgia’s secretary of state. With less than 1 per cent of any election day precincts reporting statewide, they have an edge over their Republican counterparts, though the results from in-person voting are far from being counted.
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 00:38
Georgia election polls: Who is winning Senate runoff race?
Washington correspondent Griffin Connolly breaks down what the polls were saying ahead of election night:
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 00:14
Most polls have closed in Georgia. When will we know the results?
Most polls in Georgia have now closed, except for those still waiting in line, and a handful of precincts ordered to stay open for a little while longer.
Election officials were able to begin the process of tabulating early mail-in votes before polls closed. Those ballots are expected to lean heavily Democratic, potentially skewing early assessments of the outcomes. So the “race” begins of watching results waver throughout the night – the very basic process of counting that Trump has called “dumps” of fraudulent ballots.
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 00:10
7 in 10 Republican voters in Georgia believe Trump’s false assertion that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected
Seven out of 10 Republican voters in Georgia do not believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected in te 2020 presidential races, according to a survey of more than 3,600 voters.
The AP VoteCast conducted during the runoff elections for two US Senate seats also found that six out of 10 voters overall believe control of the Senate, which is on the line with these races, is the single most important factor in casting their ballot.
Republican voters in the state “overwhelmingly lack confidence” that the 2020 vote count was accurate, compared to 84 per cent of Democratic voters.
Alex Woodward6 January 2021 00:04
DeKalb County turnout surpasses presidential election
Based on real-time numbers from DeKalb County precincts, the number of ballots cast there have surpassed those cast during the 2020 presidential election, as Nate Cohn points out.
Alex Woodward5 January 2021 23:53
