What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

Big, sweeping legislation would be hard even if Democrats win tonight. But keep in mind that there are several moderate or institutionalist Republicans who will work with Democrats on certain types of votes, especially on procedural votes. And those moderates might feel a bit more emboldened to break ranks from the rest of the GOP if Democrats win these runoffs tonight.

I totally agree with you about the policy stakes of this election, Perry — it will be hard for Biden and the Democrats to pass big, sweeping legislation even if they win both races tonight. On the other hand, it will be easier for Biden to avoid long, drawn-out fights or even stonewalling over his executive branch appointments if the Democrats can win both seats, not to mention that he’ll actually be able to get some judicial appointments through, which is far from a given if Republicans are in control.

Adding up the votes from the 27 counties that have reported at least 95 percent of their expected vote, Perdue and Loeffler are doing very slightly better than Trump’s margin in November — Perdue 0.5 points and Loeffler 0.1 points. But these are mostly very Republican counties and pretty small in terms of population, so don’t read too much into them.