ATLANTA (NewsNation Now) — With the Georgia presidential vote audit wrapped up, all eyes now shift politically to the two Senate runoffs in the Peach State.
If Democrats win both, they’ll have control of both chambers of Congress and the White House.
“The planets have aligned themselves to make Georgia the center of American politics,” Georgia State University political science professor Daniel Franklin said.
The runoffs are between Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Senator David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff.
Unlike almost every other state, Georgia has a law requiring that Senate candidates receive more than 50 percent of the vote.
That didn’t happen, which is why both races are headed to runoffs.
If Democrats win both seats, that would mean a tie between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would then have the tie breaking vote, meaning Democrats could potentially do things like pack the Supreme Court, make Puerto Rico a state, quickly approve Federal judges, and control committee chairmanships.
Democrats and Republicans are expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the runoff on January 5th.
“With the amount of attention paid to this race, I would say there will be higher turnout. But it won’t be at the level of the presidential race. And the general rule of thumb is low turnout elections favor the Republicans. If I was a betting man I would say Republicans will win this one,” Franklin said.