What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

We just got about 96,000 absentee votes in Fulton County (Atlanta), which Ossoff won 80 percent to 20 percent and Warnock won 81 percent to 19 percent. In November, Biden won Fulton County absentees 79 percent to 21 percent, so tonight’s numbers imply another very close race.

Since November, Georgia election officials have had to repeatedly rebut Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the general election — which he repeated as recently as last night at a rally, despite having no evidence to support his allegation that the election was “rigged.” In a leaked telephone conversation over the weekend, Trump even went so far as to pressure the state’s Republican secretary of state to “find” enough votes to change the result of the election, citing similarly unfounded allegations of fraud. In response, Georgia Republican election official Gabriel Sterling systematically rebutted a raft of Trump claims at a news conference yesterday, adding with some frustration that he hoped it would be the last time he has to repeat things he’s been saying publicly for two months.

The big question tonight is which party will control the Senate for the next two years, to state the obvious. But taking the long view, the future of the electoral map is also at stake. Democrats have lost significant ground in the Midwest, to the point that states like Ohio and Iowa aren’t really competitive for them anymore. If they are going to keep losing ground in the Midwest, they need places like Georgia (or Arizona) to be regularly competitive for them, or even squarely in their corner going forward.