Georgia Will Now Have Two Senate Elections In 2020

With the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate currently standing at 53-47, Democrats need to net four seats in the 2020 election to take control — or three, if they also win the presidency and therefore the vice presidency, the tie-breaking vote in the chamber. Democrats’ opportunities to do so expanded on Wednesday, when Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson announced that he would resign at the end of the year. Isakson, a Republican who has served in the Senate since 2005, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2015 and cited his “mounting health challenges” as the reason for his decision.

What happens next is that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp will appoint a new senator to serve until the next regularly scheduled general election (in this case, November 2020), at which point a special election will be held to decide who serves the rest of Isakson’s term. Because Isakson was not scheduled to be up for reelection until 2022, the upshot for Democrats is that one extra Republican-held Senate seat will be on the ballot next year1 — and it comes in a state that could be competitive.

With FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean2 of R+12, Georgia is still a red state. But the steady growth of the state’s nonwhite population and the defection of voters in well-educated suburbs (such as those around Atlanta) to Democrats in the Trump era have caused it to drift left. In the 2008 presidential election, Georgia was 12.5 points redder than the nation as a whole; in 2012, it was 11.8 points redder; in 2016, it was 7.3 points redder. It is reasonable to expect, then, that Georgia could be even closer to the tipping point in 2020. In other words, a good national cycle for Democrats — or a good Democratic candidate — could be enough to flip the seat blue (or at least come close).

Furthermore, Georgia’s other U.S. senator, Republican David Perdue, was already up for reelection next year. That’s a big deal because chances are that the same party will win both Senate seats. Why? Because when both of a state’s Senate seats are on the ballot at the same time, they almost always go the same way. The last time there was a split decision in one of these “double-barrel” Senate elections was 1966. So Democrats might try harder in Georgia in 2020 than they were already going to, as they could get two Senate seats for the price of one. That said, with Senate results increasingly determined by presidential partisanship, both seats may simply go the way of the presidential race — and right now, handicappers expect President Trump to carry Georgia in 2020.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/georgia-will-now-have-two-senate-elections-in-2020/