Georgia’s Special Election Comes to a Nail-Biting Finish<br />Nearly 150,000 people have already cast ballots in early voting — nearly three<br />times the early vote in April, when only 193,000 ballots were cast over all.<br />Those early returns will be more Republican this time,<br />because nearly 50,000 Republican-leaning voters who cast ballots on Election Day in April decided to vote early in the runoff.<br />ATLANTA — Tuesday’s runoff between Karen Handel and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District will decide what has become the most expensive House campaign in history —<br />and quite possibly the most consequential special election since Watergate.<br />Yet as high as the stakes may be, the race to fill the seat vacated by Health Secretary Tom Price may turn on a simple question: whether the<br />Democratic energy opposing President Trump is enough to overcome the built-in Republican advantage in a conservative-leaning district.<br />The first returns — the early votes of people who cast their ballots at polling places, rather than on paper — will not be conclusive, either.<br />For all the early and absentee ballots already cast, the race is competitive enough that Election Day could prove decisive.<br />Nearly 40,000 people who have voted early in the runoff did not vote at all in April.<br />He could win by carrying just 3 or 4 percent of the voters who backed Republican candidates other than Ms. Handel in April.<br />And, perhaps showing how badly they need a lift, some supporters of Ms. Handel have seized on a liberal, anti-Trump gunman’s attack at a Republican<br />congressional baseball practice last week as a boon, thinking it could jolt at least some complacent voters into turning out for her.
