heres what you need to know about the georgia senate runoffs on politicsjan 6 2021warnock topples loeffler in georgia and ossoff has momentum as the final votes are being tallied its wednesday and this is your politics tip sheet sign up here to get on politics in your inbox every weekdayimagewhere things standthe rev raphael warnock has won his challenge to senator kelly loeffler in georgia becoming the first black senatorelect in the states history and possibly helping the democrats seize control of the senate as joe biden enters the presidencythe fate of the chamber remains up in the air as no official winner has yet been called in georgias other senate runoff election between david perdue and his democratic challenger jon ossoffbut with most voters casting consistent ballots for two candidates of a single party ossoff appears to have a good chance of joining warnock in the winners circle once all votes are counted you can follow the final results as they come in at this pageeven once a winner is declared in the perdueossoff race the story may not be completely finished if their contest ends up being decided by less than half a percentage point georgia law dictates that the trailing candidate will be permitted to request a recountbut officials said yesterday that they would be prepared to execute a recount swiftly particularly after going through three separate recounts after the general election as president trump and his allies repeatedly challenged the resultsthe story of georgias runoffs turned largely on the participation of black voters who made up a higher percentage of the electorate than they did in novembers general election and it leaves open the question of how badly trumps efforts to discredit the voting systems in georgia harmed his own partyover 12 million votes were cast in person on election day exceeding officials expectations high dayof turnout had been expected to play out in republicans favor but enough democrats cast ballots yesterday to prevent perdue and loeffler from pulling ahead as in the general election early voters leaned more heavily democraticperdue ran ahead of loeffler by tens of thousands of votes reflecting his slightly higher favorability rating but in the end both candidates appeared on track to finish well behind the only other republican on the ballot for statewide office georgias public service commissioner lauren mcdonald jr known as bubba who was reelected yesterdayloeffler had aggressively gone on the attack against warnock especially in the last few days of the race but perdue spent them in quarantine after being exposed to the coronavirus last weekneither incumbent appeared able to escape looming questions about their stocktrading activity a topic that both democrats had hammered them on at every turn both perdue and loeffler dumped large amounts of stock in the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic before the public became aware of how badly it would damage the economy the senators both came under investigation by the justice department though charges were ultimately not brought against