Could the Georgia runoffs go to a recount? Here’s what it would take

Georgia Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won by thin margins Wednesday for two U.S. Senate seats. So is a recount possible?

Ossoff beat Republican Sen. David Perdue Wednesday afternoon by 27,075 votes with 98% of votes tallied, according to the Associated Press. This represents a 0.6% margin.

The Rev. Warnock, who was declared the winner by the Associated Press, leads Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler by 64,488 votes for a 1.4% margin.

Under Georgia law, candidates can request a recount if the margin of votes is 0.5% or less.

That means neither Republican candidate can ask for a recount if the current margin remains. Warnock appears to have won by a big enough margin to hold off any recount effort by Loeffler and while Ossoff’s lead is narrower, it’s still above the 0.5% cut-off.

An election official can ask for a recount if there are suspected discrepancies, and a candidate can also petition to the secretary of state if he or she suspects errors in the voting.

Perdue’s campaign said Wednesday morning they “will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots are properly counted.”

“The votes left to be counted are still disproportionately from areas where the Democrats have been outperforming, so Ossoff’s advantage over Perdue is likely to grow,” FiveThirtyEight’s Micah Cohen said Wednesday.

Warnock and Ossoff’s victories in the races mean Democrats will have control of the Senate.

A recount was done in Georgia following the presidential election in November, when President-elect Joe Biden had a narrow lead over President Donald Trump. Biden went on to win the state by 0.24 percentage points.

This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 9:16 AM with the headline "Could the Georgia runoffs go to a recount? Here’s what it would take."