About three-quarters of voters who backed Republican candidates in Georgia’s Senate runoffs say President-elect Joe Biden was not legitimately elected in November.
In a race for a full six-year term, former journalist Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, is challenging Sen. David Perdue, a Republican, for his Senate seat. In a race for a two-year term, Sen. Kelly Loeffler is facing a challenge from Reverend Raphael Warnock.
That's according to AP VoteCast, a survey of voters in Tuesday’s high-stakes Senate contests. The poll of voters measured how deeply President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud and misconduct have resonated with Republicans in the state.
Despite the courts, state officials and the Justice Department finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud, roughly 9 in 10 of the Republicans’ backers say they lacked high confidence that votes in November’s presidential contest were accurately counted.
The US Senate would be evenly divided if Democrats win both seats with the Democratic and Republican caucuses each holding 50 seats each (two independent senators caucus with the Democrats). Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would then act as a tie-breaker in the Senate, giving the Democrats the advantage of chairing committees and likely making Sen. Chuck Schumer the body’s majority leader. The majority leader is largely responsible for deciding which bills and votes go to the floor, which would mean President-elect Joe Biden would have a much easier time getting his nominees and legislative priorities through the Senate.