Democrats are on the cusp of taking control of the Senate as they celebrate the Rev. Raphael Warnock's win in one of two Georgia runoffs and as Jon Ossoff declared victory in the other.
"It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve in the U.S. Senate," Ossoff said in a video released Wednesday morning, as his margin of victory over Republican David Perdue, whose Senate term expired Sunday, grew to more than 16,000.
The final votes were still being counted and the race has not been officially called in his favor. But Republicans were pessimistic because most of the remaining uncounted votes in the state were from the Atlanta and Savannah regions — areas where Democrats have piled up significant majorities.
A key question is whether that race will be resolved by a wide enough margin to avoid a recount. Under Georgia law, a candidate can request a recount if the margin is less than half a percentage point.
But the Republicans' prospect of losing the Senate — their last bastion of power — loomed for Republicans as they headed into a momentous day. Congress is poised to officially confirm Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election — but only after their party is divided in a futile effort by many Trump allies who are planning to challenge the inevitable conclusion.
Even before the Ossoff race was called, Republicans were already beginning to blame Trump for the party's poor performance, saying his futile, baseless effort to challenge his own loss in November bitterly divided the party and undercut candidates, who were trying to portray a GOP Senate majority as a firewall against Democratic power.
"The president effectively eliminated the most potent Republican argument by refusing to acknowledge he lost in November," said Josh Holmes, a GOP strategist close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who described the mood of the GOP now as "boiling."
Holmes said Republicans' embrace of Trump-era conspiracy theories has especially hurt the GOP among suburban voters.
"Suburbs, my friends, the suburbs," Holmes said on Twitter. "We went from talking about jobs and the economy to QAnon election conspiracies in 4 short years and - as it turns out- they were listening!"
Democrats, meanwhile, seem to have gone beyond holding together the coalition that delivered victory for Biden in November. With 98% of the vote counted, both Warnock and Ossoff were leading their GOP rivals by more votes than Biden's margin — thanks in large part to strong turnout among Black voters.
Bernard L. Fraga, a political scientist at Emory University, tweeted that it was likely that more Black voters will have cast ballots in the runoff than in the presidential election — a remarkable reversal from past runoffs, when Black turnout typically drops. Overall turnout is likely to come in just under 90% of what it was in November.
Rick Tyler, a Trump critic who was a political advisor to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said "You would have to credit President Trump with completing his trifecta of losing the House, the White House and now the Senate. Will the Republican party ever wake up?"
