What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

Cobb County (Atlanta suburbs, including Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves) has reported 96,000 absentee votes; Ossoff won them by 33 points and Warnock won them by 35 points. In November, Biden won Cobb absentees by “just” 30 points. At this point, Democrats’ absentee hauls in metro Atlanta are what they need to win. However, we need to see what the Election Day vote looks like before they can celebrate.

Looking at the counties where more than 99 percent of the expected vote has reported, we see a pattern: both Ossoff and Warnock are slightly overperforming Biden’s vote share in November. And Warnock’s margin looks like it’s just a bit larger than Ossoff’s, consistent with pre-election polling. But be careful in reading too much into these early returns: The results are mostly from very small, rural counties.

How counties are voting in the regular Senate runoff

The current margins, by county, for the Georgia Senate race between Sen. David Perdue (R) and Jon Ossoff (D) and how that margin compares to the county’s final Nov. presidential margin

county	County size	Cand. Margin	Pres. Margin	Diff
Washington	◼️◼️◻️	D+2.5	D+0.8	D+1.7
Ben Hill	◼️◻️◻️	R+23.6	R+26.2	D+2.6
Candler	◼️◻️◻️	R+42.1	R+42.1	R+0.0
Johnson	◼️◻️◻️	R+41.6	R+39.7	R+1.9
Turner	◼️◻️◻️	R+23.5	R+24.8	D+1.2
Lanier	◼️◻️◻️	R+40.3	R+41.7	D+1.3
Chattahoochee	◼️◻️◻️	R+8.2	R+13.5	D+5.3

How counties are voting in the special Senate runoff

The current margins, by county, for the Georgia Senate race between Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) and Raphael Warnock (D) and how that margin compares to the county’s final Nov. presidential margin

county	County size	Cand. Margin	Pres. Margin	Diff
Washington	◼️◼️◻️	D+3.0	D+0.8	D+2.2
Ben Hill	◼️◻️◻️	R+23.3	R+26.2	D+2.8
Candler	◼️◻️◻️	R+42.3	R+42.1	R+0.2
Johnson	◼️◻️◻️	R+41.4	R+39.7	R+1.7
Turner	◼️◻️◻️	R+23.3	R+24.8	D+1.5
Lanier	◼️◻️◻️	R+40.1	R+41.7	D+1.6
Chattahoochee	◼️◻️◻️	R+8.9	R+13.5	D+4.6

Prediction markets now show Democrats as about a 58 percent favorite to win control of the Senate. I’m not sure I’d read much into that, given how weird prediction markets have been lately, though.