Eliana Willis

Georgia officials were bedding in for a long night of vote counting on Tuesday as polls closed in the two critical runoff races that will determine control of the US Senate, and with it the tone and ambition of the Biden administration.Early data gleaned after polls closed across the state at 7pm pointed to exceptionally large total turnout compared with previous runoffs. The two Democratic contenders – the former documentary film-maker Jon Ossoff and the Atlanta pastor Raphael Warnock – are attempting to unseat Georgia’s two incumbent Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.Tell-tale signs also suggested that the count could be close and potentially drawn out over hours or even beyond Tuesday night.Throughout Tuesday, polling stations across the state reported a steady stream of voters who defied a devastating surge in coronavirus infections in Georgia to vote in person. Individual Georgians went to extreme lengths to take part in what have been described as elections that could set the course of America for a generation.Tyler Perry, the Atlanta-based actor and film-maker, flew back to the city to cast his vote after he failed to receive an absentee ballot.According to state election officials, the number of Georgians who had cast their votes in advance of election day – either through absentee ballots or by early voting – reached 3.1 million. That, on its own, smashed the standing record set in 2008 for a Senate runoff in Georgia which attracted a total of 2.1 million voters.By the time the final votes are counted, election officials suggested the total might reach almost double the 2008 record.The enormous electoral energy swirling around the runoffs was reflected in key counties where the results of both races could be won or lost. Dekalb county, which covers the eastern suburbs of Atlanta, saw turnout on Tuesday exceed even that of the presidential election day in November.For participation in runoff elections to surpass that of a presidential race was extremely rare, and was welcomed as a positive signal by Democrats given that Biden soundly defeated Trump in Dekalb county by 83% to 16% in November. However, a similar story of large turnout was also being told in key Republican-leaning counties, such as Forsyth county and Cherokee county where long lines were witnessed outside the polling places.Stacey Abrams, who has been seminal in building a Democratic ground game through her group Fair Fight, told CNN shortly before the polls closed that the steady turnout indicated high levels of voter interest all through the state. But she added that both parties appeared to be attracting voters in large numbers, pointing to a close battle.“We haven’t seen the deluge. We see a very steady flow of voters on both sides of the aisle, which indicates it’s going to be a very tight race,” Abrams said.Massive turnout across early, absentee and election-day voting was a reflection of the exceptionally high stakes of the two runoffs. Their outcome will determine which of the two main parties controls the US Senate.Democrats need to win both races if they are to balance the chamber at 50/50 seats across the aisle. An even split would hand Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect, the deciding tie-breaker vote and with it the ability to shape the Senate’s legislative program.The president-elect himself summed up the high stakes on the eve of election day at a rally in Atlanta. He told the crowd that “one state can chart the course not just for the next four years, but for the next generation”.Fears of trouble or even violence outside polling stations appeared not to have materialised. Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, told CNN that “we have never seen an election is more secure and has had more integrity.”His fellow Republican official, Gabriel Sterling, said that incidents of difficulties with voting mechanisms were passingly few. At a press conference, he said that only 0.1% of scanning machines across the state had failed to work while 0.02% of counting machines had to be replaced.Cutting across both parties herculean efforts to get their supporters to the polls on Tuesday was the mercurial influence of Donald Trump. The president continues to refuse to concede defeat in the presidential election, and has persisted in a campaign of falsehoods targeting Georgia with unfounded claims of voter fraud.Trump lit a fuse under the double runoffs on Saturday when he called Raffensperger and tried to cajole him into overturning the certified results of the presidential race. The conversation was taped and leaked, and has led to calls for Trump to be prosecuted for election crimes.The president’s antics have left some Republicans in Georgia fretting that his claims that his victory was “stolen” would dissuade party supporters from turning up at the polls on Tuesday. But it remained to be seen just how much impact his incendiary interventions would make, and in what direction.The Republican contestants have attempted to move beyond Trump’s baseless complaint about the presidential count and focus their campaigns on what they have depicted as the “radical socialism” of their Democratic rivals. The airwaves have been flooded with unprecedented numbers of political adverts on both sides, with the campaigns of the four candidates jointly splurging more than $833m on the state according to the Center for Responsive Politics.Nonetheless Loeffler, the richest member of the Senate who also prides herself as being the chamber’s most conservative, has announced that she will vote to challenge the electoral college results at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. More