Jon Ossoff was on a trajectory to defeat Karen Handel narrowly, poised to deliver a humiliating blow to the White House in a race billed as a referendum of Donald Trump’s early months in office. Then the Republican voters in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District unexpectedly showed up in droves.
Pollsters say sky-high turnout drove Handel, the GOP nominee, to a nearly 4-point victory on Tuesday, despite most pre-election surveys showing Ossoff with a small-but-shrinking lead.
Mathematically, a 4-point loss for a Democratic House candidate in a district that has traditionally elected Republicans by wide margins is an encouraging result for Democrats. But in the end, the Georgia contest represented yet another election in which the Democratic candidate either led or was tied in public polls — and was overtaken by the Republican when all the votes were counted.
Unlike in some other races, however, it wasn’t because Democratic voters didn’t show up. More than 259,000 votes have been tallied as of Wednesday afternoon, considerably more than the 193,000 votes in the first round of voting in April.
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