Georgia Senate election results: Jon Ossoff declared runoff winner as ‘militia gathers’ at state Capitol

Jeffrey Sprecher - comically-wealthy husband of Kelly Loeffler and the boss of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which oversees the New York Stock Exchange and the Libor - has just passed the 10-figure mark, according to Bloomberg.

Sprecher’s firm is “a $63bn behemoth that underpins much of the global financial system” whose success provides “another reminder of how Wall Street has done well during the pandemic while the broader economy struggles”, Anders Melin and Matthew Leising write.

So, in other words, don’t expect Loeffler to be too down if the good reverend trounces her at the polls today!

She can always console herself with a Scrooge McDuckian dive into her palatial money pool.

Here’s a word from the celebrated Georgia-based voter registration activist, credited with turning the state blue for Biden in November after being narrowly eased out of the governor’s office by the now-beleagured Brian Kemp during the 2018 midterms. 

Oh. Is that is Stacey? Nothing else?

Well, in that case, here’s a piece on what the outcome of today’s vote could mean for post-Trump politics in the US.

Rev. Raphael Warnock, one of the two Democratic candidates in Georgia’s twin runoff elections on Tuesday expressed optimism as voters headed to the polls, writing on Twitter: “Today’s our day”. 

The reverend shared the words of his father, writing: “My dad used to wake me up at 6am every day. ‘Put your shoes on, son,’ he'd say, 'Get ready. There's something for you to do’."

“Georgia, today's our day,” he said. “Get your shoes on. Get Ready. Go vote.”

Latino voters in Georgia have reportedly already shattered records for runoff election turnout, with 65 per cent of those who voted early in November casting their ballots ahead of Tuesday’s runoffs. 

As of Monday, 79,782 Latinos had voted early in the runoffs, compared with 124,662 on the Monday before the 3 November presidential election, Bernard Fraga, an associate professor of politics at Emory University, told NBC News.

With a total of 174, 508 Latinos in Georgia voting in the general election, Mr Fraga noted, that would mean about 50,000 voters went to the polls on Election Day.

The sweeping voter turnout for Tuesday’s runoffs represents a major spike from turnout in the state’s last runoff in 2018. In that race, just around 10 per cent of Latinos who turned out for the general election hit the polls again.

Underlining how dramatic the surge in voter turnout is this year, Mr Fraga said:"This is the highest turnout there will ever be for Latinos in a runoff."

At stake in the twin Georgia runoff elections is control of the Senate. If one or both of the Republican candidates emerge victorious, the chamber will remain under Republican control, severely impacting Joe Biden’s ability to push forward some of the more ambitious goals in his legislative agenda.

If Democrats win, there will be a 50/50 split across the chamber, with Vice president-elect Kamala Harris holding the tiebreaker.

Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger has called on Republican senator David Perdue, who is seeking re-election in one of today’s two high-stakes run off elections, to apologise for death threats his wife received after comments made by the senator.

Speaking with Fox News, Raffensperger he had “heard one peep” from Perdue after his wife received threats following the senator’s calls for the secretary of state’s resignation over alleged mismanagement of 2020 election results.

"Senator Perdue still owes my wife an apology for all the death threats she got after he asked for my resignation," Raffensperger said. 

“I’ve not heard one peep from that man since. If he wants to call me, face to face, man to man, I'll talk to him, off the record, but he hasn't done that,” he said. 

James Crump has this report.

Yeesh. And it’s apparently not even a first offence. 

Gino Spocchia has more.

Georgia’s suddenly-very-famous secretary of state has told Fox’s Sandra Smith not to get too excited this evening as the outcome may not be clear until tomorrow.

Amusingly, no one appears to have any idea how this one is going to play out, with Politico warning it will be a bad night for the Dems and The Washington Post saying the same about the Republicans.

You’d be forgiven for thinking there was only one story that mattered in Georgia today but The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran its front page on the president’s incriminating weekend call with Brad Raffensperger instead, giving you an indication of just how seriously this domestic Zelensky is being treated in some quarters.

Roisin O’Connor has a roundup of how the likes of Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel reacted to the president’s latest scandal.

What a headline…