The en­cour­aging news for the GOP: A flurry of re­gistered Re­pub­lic­ans have showed up to cast early bal­lots in the past sev­er­al days, clos­ing the par­tis­an gap that emerged early on. The New York Times’ Nate Cohn re­por­ted that, as of Thursday night, there’s a fairly even par­tis­an split among early votes: Re­gistered Demo­crats have cast 42 per­cent of preelec­tion bal­lots and re­gistered Re­pub­lic­ans have cast 41 per­cent. Re­pub­lic­ans are still ser­i­ously un­der­per­form­ing in the early vote, but not at a low-enough level to give Os­soff an out­right vic­tory.

The bad news for the GOP: Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, Os­soff shouldn’t be com­ing close to win­ning a ma­jor­ity of the vote in a con­ser­vat­ive-friendly dis­trict like this. Demo­crats have ef­fect­ively na­tion­al­ized this race, us­ing the low-key Os­soff as a sym­bol of Demo­crat­ic res­ist­ance in the Trump era. Between Trump’s low ap­prov­al rat­ings, an angry Demo­crat­ic base, and an apathet­ic Re­pub­lic­an elect­or­ate try­ing to fig­ure out what the party stands for, an anti-Trump wave is build­ing across the coun­try. Re­pub­lic­ans are also han­di­capped in this elec­tion be­cause they have sev­er­al cred­ible can­did­ates run­ning on a crowded all-party bal­lot (led by former Geor­gia Sec­ret­ary of State Kar­en Han­del, busi­ness­man Bob Gray, and former state sen­at­or Dan Moody), while Os­soff has uni­fied the Demo­crat­ic Party be­hind his can­did­acy.

While many ana­lysts are fo­cused on the level of turnout among par­tis­ans, it’s equally im­port­ant to watch how many typ­ic­al Re­pub­lic­an voters de­fect from the party line. Des­pite rais­ing re­cord sums from lib­er­al groups, Os­soff has shrewdly po­si­tioned him­self as tough on na­tion­al se­cur­ity and fisc­ally prudent in his cam­paign ad­vert­ise­ments—a mes­sage spe­cific­ally de­signed to woo mod­er­ate Re­pub­lic­ans and in­de­pend­ents. It’s easy to for­get that a large chunk of re­li­ably Re­pub­lic­an voters cast bal­lots for Hil­lary Clin­ton just last Novem­ber, nearly giv­ing her a vic­tory in this tra­di­tion­ally GOP seat. Com­pared to Clin­ton, Os­soff isn’t nearly as po­lar­iz­ing and is run­ning on a more mod­er­ate mes­sage. If he can peel off a small slice of Re­pub­lic­ans, it would be the fi­nal twist to a race that has sur­prised strategists on both sides.