In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. Our next book, title TBA, discusses the 2020 results.
The Georgia Senate races will determine control of the Senate. Trump's role has not been completely helpful to the GOP.
President Trump took to Twitter Friday evening to make the unfounded assertion that Georgia’s two Senate races are “illegal and invalid,” an argument that could complicate his efforts to convince his supporters to turn out for Republican candidates in the two runoff races that will determine which party controls the Senate.
The president is set to hold a rally in Dalton, Ga., on Monday, the day before Election Day, and Georgia Republicans are hoping he will focus his comments on how crucial it is for Republicans to vote in large numbers for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the state’s two incumbent Republican senators.
But Mr. Trump has continued to make the false claim that Georgia’s election system was rigged against him in the Nov. 3 general election. Some Republican leaders are afraid that his supporters will take the president’s argument seriously, and decide that voting in a “corrupt” system is not worth their time, a development that could hand the election to the Democrats.
Some strategists and political science experts in the state have said Mr. Trump’s assault on Georgia’s voting system may be at least partly responsible for the relatively light Republican turnout in the conservative strongholds of northwest Georgia, where Dalton is, in the early voting period that ended Thursday.
Sen. David Perdue, one of the Republican candidates in the pair of Georgia runoffs that will determine the trajectory of Congress for the next two years, is quarantining after coming into close contact with someone connected to his campaign who has tested positive for the coronavirus.
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On Wednesday, Perdue’s campaign announced on Twitter that he had made his 100th stop on his reelection bus tour. Perdue is wearing a mask in most of the posted photos showing him next to others, but the images show lax adherence to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety principles by some attendees, including some people sitting or standing near Perdue with masks under their chins or noses, or with no masks at all. In one picture, a mask-wearing Perdue poses in front of his campaign bus with a woman not wearing a mask.
And this tweet is probably not whipping up GOP enthusiasm:
Our Republican Senate just missed the opportunity to get rid of Section 230, which gives unlimited power to Big Tech companies. Pathetic!!! Now they want to give people ravaged by the China Virus $600, rather than the $2000 which they so desperately need. Not fair, or smart!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2021
