Trump, Biden Campaign in Crucial Georgia On Eve of Senate Runoff Elections
U.S. President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden are each appearing in the southern state of Georgia Monday, the final day of campaigning before elections for two seats that will decide the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.
Trump is going to the town of Dalton for an evening rally as he backs Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
Biden will be in Atlanta to boost Jon Ossoff’s bid to unseat Perdue and the Reverend Raphael Warnock’s challenge of Loeffler.
Both elections went to a runoff after no candidate earned a majority of votes on November 3.
Georgia has been a focus of Trump’s repeated, unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
State election officials, including Republicans, have affirmed the count was accurate, and multiple courts have rejected Trump campaign legal challenges.
The issue gained more prominence Sunday with the Washington Post releasing an audio recording of a Saturday phone call featuring Trump pleading with the state’s top election official to find him enough votes to overturn his loss to Biden in Georgia.
Trump Pleads with Georgia Officials to Overturn His Loss in Phone Call‘I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have’ president is heard saying
If both Democrats win Tuesday, the party will become the majority in the Senate with the two sides each holding 50 seats and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote.
A Republican win in either race leaves a divided government, with Republicans controlling the Senate and Democrats holding the White House and House of Representatives.
In the November election, Biden became the first Democrat to win Georgia in a presidential race since 1992.
There were about 5 million votes cast in Georgia for the November vote, with 3.6 million in early ballots. In the runoff, just more than 3 million voters cast their ballot early.
Early voters strongly favored Democrats in November, making the in-person voting Tuesday crucial for the Republicans.