An extremely expensive two months of political campaigning wraps up today as Georgians officially head to the polls for the Senate runoff election day. Nearly $500 million has been spent in advertising in the race that will ultimately decide which party controls the Senate for at least the next two years.
After none of the candidates for either of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats received the necessary 50% of the vote in the Nov. 3 election, the top two candidates in each race moved on to the Jan. 5 runoff. Republican David Perdue is fighting to retain his seat against Democrat Jon Ossoff, while Sen. Kelly Loeffler is squaring off with Democrat Raphael Warnock.
The amount of money spent in the race is staggering. In 2012, Mitt Romney spent nearly $450 million across the country for his entire presidential campaign. In 2016, Hillary Clinton spent around $585 million on her entire campaign across the country. For these Senate races, around $500 million has been spent in just two months in the Peach State alone.
President Trump, Vice President Pence, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were all in Georgia for rallies over the past two days.
Voters will have until 7 p.m. this evening to get in line to cast their vote. More than 3 million people have already cast their vote in early voting, which started on Dec. 14. As with the November election, don’t be surprised if it takes some time to count the votes before a winner is declared. While the voting will conclude today, we may not know the outcome for a few days as the votes are counted.
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