The 117th U.S. Congress is scheduled to open on January 3, 2021. Democrats will still control the House of Representatives, but the seat advantage has been significantly weakened, making it the least dominant majority in the House in 20 years.
The Senate is temporarily suspended. Who can become the Senate majority depends on the results of Georgia’s two runoffs scheduled for January 5.
The Georgia Senate runoff has attracted national and international attention. Current President Trump and President-elect Biden will go to the election again on the 4th.
“In an election, two seats from the same state determine the control of the Senate,” said Charles Bullock, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia.
Choose love glue
In the 5th election, incumbent Republican Senators Perdue and Levler will face Democrats, former documentary director Osof and African-American priest Warnock, respectively.
In the 2020 U.S. election, no candidate has more than 50% of the vote, and according to the state law, a round of summary election between two leading candidates is required.
For two months, both the Democratic and Republican parties have been campaigning in Georgia, and the campaign advertisements on TV and radio have been “overwhemented”.
The Center for Research on Sensitive Political Issues has listed these two elections as the most expensive congressional elections in the history of American politics. The first round has cost $205 million, and the runoff phase has cost nearly $500 million.
According to the January 1st “American Election Plan” statistics of the University of Florida, Georgia voters have cast more than 3 million votes in advance, accounting for 38.8% of registered voters in the state, a record high.
However, although the early voting has been completed, the counting of votes will not begin until election day.
Some analysts believe that early voting in Georgia’s Democratic majority and African-American voters means that Republicans need a strong performance on election day to retain their Senate seats.
But state polls show that the two parties are evenly close to a draw.” The average poll on the website “True Transparency Politics” shows that two Democrats are currently slightly ahead, but only 1.8 and 0.8 percentage points respectively.
The Washington Post said changes such as the pandemic and the increase in early voting have made voting winds more unpredictable.
The New Yorker reported that the rural “black belt” areas with large African-residents in Georgia have been hit hard by the epidemic, and the gap between rich and poor in the health field is significant, which will affect the election situation.
The epitome of the election
Georgia has been a Republican-dominated “deep south red state” for decades, and it didn’t really shake until the 2020 election – Democrat Biden won 49.5% to 49.3% of the vote, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win in Georgia since Clinton in 1992.
Select people. Analysts believe that Biden’s victory and the “competitive draw” in the Senate election indicate that Georgia is changing, which partly reflects the change in the national map of bipartisan politics in the United States.
The theme of this round of senatorial runoff is also like the restatement of the 2020 general election.
Two Republican senators seeking re-election, Perdue and Lefler, claimed that their Democratic opponents were “dangerous radicals” and “wanted to fundamentally change the United States” and called on voters to support them as the “firewall” for Congress to block the Democrats.
In the final days of the runoff, Perdue was quarantined for exposure to people with COVID-19, adding variables to the campaign.
Both Osof and Warnock both take a moderate line and do not support the Democratic left-wing agendas such as the Green New Deal, “Medicare for All” and the expansion of the Supreme Court; advocate increasing funding for the epidemic relief, expanding Obamacare and guaranteeing black voting rights; and attacking Republican opponents for being cold, too rich and not caring for vulnerable groups.
Body. Jeff Sprecher, Leffler’s husband and chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, rose to $1 billion in the epidemic, becoming a bashing stalk and compared with the situation of Georgians suffering from both the epidemic and the recession.
In the 2020 presidential election, there is a trend of restructuring the bipartisan voter structure, with Democratic support among Latino and black male voters falling, while support among white voters with college degrees rising.
Education level has become an important factor affecting the political orientation of voters. Biden has a significant advantage among wealthy, college-educated and older voters in the suburbs around Atlanta, the capital of Georgia.
This success is likely to be replicated by the same moderate Democratic Senate candidate. Analysts from both parties believe that in a state like Georgia, which is just beginning to waver, the Democratic Party still has to rely on traditionally conservative voters, but the Democratic left is also actively helping to mobilize young and non-white voters in the state.
Trump’s words and deeds are also believed to affect Georgia’s runoff. After the election, Trump continued to criticize Georgia’s Republican leaders about the presidential election results, even calling Republican Governor Kemp a “fool” and demanding that he resign. On January 1, Trump attacked Georgia’s runoff on social media as “illegal and invalid”.
Although there was no evidence, some Republican politicians worried that Trump supporters did not think it was worth spending time voting in a “corrupt” system, thus lowering Republican voter turnout.
At stake
The U.S. Congress is the legislative body. In addition to legislative matters, the Senate is also responsible for approving treaties concluded by the federal government and the appointment of important executive and judicial positions nominated by the president.
The majority party in Congress can not only control the legislative agenda and advance the legislation priorities of the party, but also chair the chairmanship of each committee, decide which bills to debate or vote on, and decide whether to launch an investigation against the current government.
According to the Constitution, the U.S. Congress is composed of 50 states, large and small, with two senators for a six-year term, and one-third of the election every two years.
After the 2020 election, the Democrats held 48 seats in the Senate (including two independent senators who voted with the Democrats) and the Republicans held 50 seats. If at least one of Georgia’s two seats belongs to the Republican Party, the Republican Party will have 51 or 52 seats in the new Congressional Senate, thus ensuring majority party status.
If Georgia has both seats in the Democratic Party, the two parties will have 50 seats each. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who will take office on January 20, holds a decisive vote as the President of the Senate, making the Democratic Party the least dominant majority party in the history of the United States Senate.
This is obviously of great concern to how the incoming Biden administration governs and how the two parties in Congress fight, and will also have a direct impact on the livelihood of American society.
If the Republicans continue to maintain their Senate majority, they will be able to block most of the Biden administration’s agenda and its key nominations in cabinet and jurisdiction. That means that to push legislation forward, Biden and Democrats need to make more and more significant concessions to the Republican Party to reach a compromise.
If the Democrats become the Senate majority, and both the House and the White House will be controlled by Democrats, it will benefit Biden and congressional Democrats to implement their campaign promises, including additional coronavirus relief funds, possible tax increases for the rich, advancing infrastructure construction packages, and passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Carry out criminal justice reform, strengthen the response to climate change, etc. “For Biden to come into office for the next two years, Georgia [the runoff results] is crucial,” said Ed Mills, a Washington policy analyst at the investment firm Raymond-James Partnership.
However, regardless of the outcome of Georgia’s runoff election, the majority in the new Congress is fragile, which means that the radical legislative agenda is difficult to pass; moderate lawmakers who vote from time to time to bipartisanly have more room for action; and how to open up the path of governance between left and right and center factions and practice “unity” after Biden takes office.”
and the promise of “healing wounds” provide opportunities and tests. After the Georgia runoff election, the white-hot party struggle between “needle tip vs. Maimang” in the United States in recent years is bound to be another situation.
