WASHINGTON _ As the polls closed Tuesday evening, the political world was watching and waiting for the results in a special House election in Georgia, where a win for Democrats would deliver a severe rebuke to President Donald Trump fewer than a hundred days into his presidency.
In a race that has brought national attention to this suburban Atlanta district, the question was not which candidate will finish in first. Polls showed the leading Democratic contender, Jon Ossoff, with a big lead in an 18-candidate field, including 11 Republicans.
The question was whether Ossoff, a 30-year-old owner of an investigative film company, could win more than 50 percent of the vote. If so, Ossoff would win outright in a district that hasn't been represented by a Democrat since 1979, in a race few gave him a serious chance of claiming as recently as February.
If Ossoff were to finish below the 50 percent threshold _ as most Republican and even Democrats expected _ he'd then enter a runoff against the second leading vote-getter, in all likelihood a Republican candidate. The pair would face each other on the ballot two months later, on June 20.
The Republican field was led by former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, businessman and avid Trump supporter Bob Gray, and former Georgia state Sen. Judson Hill. Polls showed the GOP leaders closely bunched together, though Handel was considered a slight favorite.
Georgia's 6th Congressional District has been a traditional Republican stronghold, represented in the 1980s and early 1990s by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It's strongly supported Republican presidential candidates, too, giving Mitt Romney a greater than 20-point win in 2012.
But Trump's sharp-elbowed cultural worldview and provocative rhetoric helped Hillary Clinton make serious inroads in a place populated by wealthy, well-educated white voters, many of whom defected en masse from the GOP leader's ticket last year. Trump won the district by only about one point over Hillary Clinton.
That swing foreshadowed an opening for Ossoff, who became a candidate for the open-seat race after former Rep. Tom Price became the president's secretary of health and human services earlier this year.
The Democratic candidate, a former congressional aide and the owner of an investigative film company, is only 30 years old. But his candidacy became a sensation among liberal activists nationwide, who helped Ossoff raise more than $8 million in only two months _ an astounding sum that helped him become an early front-runner in the race.
Even as he ran a campaign more focused on jobs and shaking up the Washington status quo, Ossoff became a symbol of the anti-Trump movement. And Democratic leaders say they hope the energy he's stirred in the party's base will be a sign of things to come in next year's midterm elections.
"We're the underdog in this," said Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on MSNBC on Monday. "But we've got some real wind at our back at every level."
National Republicans, hamstrung by a convoluted 11-candidate field in their own party, responded to Ossoff in force. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP-aligned Super PAC, and National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's political arm, spent millions of dollars attacking the Democrat in TV and digital ads. The attacks, Democrats concede, slowed Ossoff's momentum.
Although the Georgia race has received the most attention, it's not the only special House election to make waves this year. Last week, a House race in Kansas became unexpectedly competitive, with the GOP nominee defeating a Democrat by just seven points in a district Republicans won by more than 30 points in November.
Next month, Democrats and Republicans will tangle again in a House race in Montana, a contest where the Congressional Leadership Fund and NRCC are already running attack ads against Democratic nominee Rob Quist.
