Trump promises ‘orderly transition’ but continues election lies as Biden certified US president – live

In all the furore surrounding the invasion of the Capitol yesterday by a pro-Trump mob, it shouldn’t be lost that Rev. Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff were elected to the Senate, giving the Democrats control and transforming how the first two years of a Biden presidency will look. Kenya Evelyn reports for us on how Black voters lifted the Georgia Democrats to those Senate runoff victories.

Black voters showed up in record numbers for Georgia’s Senate runoff election on Tuesday, handing the Democratic Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff decisive victories against the Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively.

According to the Associated Press, more than 4.4 million votes were cast, about 88% of the number who voted in November’s contest, when turnout was 68 percent overall.

Just weeks after flipping the conservative stronghold in the general election, local strategists and community organizers across the state are being credited with once again galvanizing a voting bloc critical in delivering Democrats’ victory.

“Black runoff turnout was phenomenal and the [Donald] Trump base just couldn’t keep up,” the political analyst Dave Wasserman tweeted shortly after being one of the first to call the race for Warnock.

Tuesday’s win makes the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church the first Black senator from Georgia and the first in a former Confederate state since Reconstruction. The milestone is considered by some analysts to be a factor in the surge in participation.

Black voters in the state were the deciding force in both Democratic victories, particularly in urban and rural communities with large Black populations. Typically, these groups are less likely to vote in state and local contests than their white counterparts.

The runoffs garnered national attention after Black voters – along with new Georgia residents of all races – successfully flipped the state from reliably Republican to a competitive purple in November, with the Democrat Joe Biden narrowly winning over the incumbent president by more than 11,000 votes.

“The margins are so small that every action, including your vote, matters and will make a difference,” Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, told CNN. “Black voters got that message. Black voters recognized that we need to complete the task.”

Read more of Kenya Evelyn’s report here: How Black voters lifted Georgia Democrats to Senate runoff victories

source: theguardian.com