What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

In my COVID-19 post, I forgot to mention one important way the pandemic has impacted this race: Perdue has had to stay off the campaign trail the last few days because he has been quarantining after being exposed to someone who later tested positive for COVID-19.

Lanier County is reporting around 3,000 votes in, an estimated 95 percent of what’s expected there (for context, around 3,500 votes were cast in the presidential race in November). And so far, Ossoff and Warnock are running just ahead of Biden’s vote share in November — they’re at 30 percent of the vote, while Biden got 28.5 percent. Of course, this is a small, Republican county, so it’s not representative of the state as a whole.

In case you’re tempted to pay attention to the exit polls tonight: Don’t. The same problems that existed with the exit polls in November still apply today — namely, they had to be supplemented by phone polls of absentee voters, making them about as useful as a high-quality pre-election poll. The exit polls are also still preliminary, as they will be weighted to the final result after every vote is counted. These early waves could be unrepresentative.