RUNOFF! Georgia special election hands second stunning loss to democrats

Based on vote totals as of 10:00 pm, CDN is calling the Georgia special election in the 6th congressional district: It will go to a runoff.

2:24 am – All precincts reporting: Ossoff ends with 48.1% of the vote and republican Karen Handle led all 11 GOP candidates with 20% – a runoff will be held on June 20th.

1:00 am – Ossoff continues to slip, now down to 48.3%

12:05 am – With 84% of precincts reporting, Ossoff has dropped to 48.6% which is below the needed 50% of votes to avoid a runoff.

11:00 pm – With just over half the returns having been tallied, Ossoff is holding just 50.3% of the vote. The votes that remain to be counted are in the deep red territory of Fulton County and are likely to erase the marginal majority Ossoff is currently holding.

Likely to launch conspiracy theories, deep republican Fulton county is having trouble getting its votes uploaded to the state.

Fulton County is having problems updating its tallies into state servers, and won't update reporters on site…yet

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) April 19, 2017

This technical glitch comes after a polling place manager had early vote logs stolen out of his vehicle after he “may have left the doors unlocked.”

Ossoff captured more than 48% of the vote but with the other 4 democrats capturing less than 1% he may have maxed out his support. In a county that Trump only won by 2%, the vote total shows that he may lack the voter support to pull off a win in June.

Handel grabbed 20% of the vote total while the other 10 republicans captured a total of just over 32%. In the June 20th runoff, those republican votes are unlikely to shift to a far-left democrat that lives in a different district.  That should give Handel 52%+ of the vote in June if the numbers and turnout remain the same.

Ossoff is considered an outsider as he does not live in the district in which he is running and he has dodged accusations that 95% of the money benefiting his campaign came from outside of Georgia.

Mr. Ossoff has also been criticized as a bought and paid for puppet of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. New York and San Francisco ideas and messages work in those bastions of progressivism, but sound foreign to suburban middle-class working families.

Democrats dumped almost $10 million dollars into the special election and deemed it a “referendum on President Trump,” hoping to turn the republican 6th district blue without going to a runoff. A win would give them a strong talking point going into the midterm elections and drastically increase the DNC’s ability to raise money.

DNC messaging is singularly focused, “Vote for democrats because Trump is bad.” While that purely negative message raises millions from wealthy New York and California democrats and pulls in millennials to volunteer and vote, it has been repeatedly and soundly rejected by middle-class working families, military service members/veterans, and out-of-work Americans.

Democrats also attempted to flip Kansas’ 4th district in April. They had a much better chance in Kansas as the election was viewed as a referendum on an unpopular governor. The DNC allocated significant resources to the KS04 race only to be defeated.

As Georgian’s hand democrats a second loss, it is likely to leave donors and party members wondering if the party leadership has any idea how to win elections outside of large population centers in deep blue states.

Georgia’s 6th Congressional District is made up of several northern Atlanta suburbs and includes eastern Cobb County, northern Fulton County, the Dunwoody area of northern Dekalb County.