2.3 million people have voted in Georgia’s Senate runoffs with week to go

More than 2.3 million people have voted in Georgia’s critical Senate runoff races with about a week to go until Election Day on Jan. 5.

Georgia GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are facing off against Democrats the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively, in races that will determine whether the GOP remains in control of the Senate.

Roughly 1.5 million people have already voted early in person, according to the U.S. Elections Project, citing data from the secretary of state’s office published on Thursday. In addition, 802,290 mail-in ballots have been accepted in the runoffs.

That’s markedly high turnout for a runoff election, which usually sees much lower participation than a general election.

More than 79,000 people who did not vote in this November’s general election have cast a ballot in the runoffs.

The runoffs already set an early voting record when 168,000 Georgians went to the polls the day they opened and another 314,000 cast absentee ballots that day. More than 1.1 million people voted either in person or by mail during the first week after early voting opened.

If Warnock and Ossoff win both races, then each party would hold 50 seats in the Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting a tiebreaking vote.

Democrats have argued that winning the upper chamber will be crucial to moving President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda forward once he takes office.

Biden, Harris and President Trump are among the A-list names stumping for their parties in Georgia.

In addition, Ossoff is now the best-funded senate candidate in U.S. history, managing to raise $106.8 million over the past two months. Warnock separately raised $103.4 million during the same time period. Loeffler and Perdue raised a combined $171 million.

The latest records of voting turnout come one day after a federal judge blocked Ben Hill and Muscogee counties from purging voter registrations based on unverified change of address.