WASHINGTON — Joe Biden's presidential election victory was propelled by suburban voters who live just outside of cities like Detroit, Philadelphia and Madison, Wisconsin.
If Democrats are to prevail in Georgia's two U.S. Senate runoff elections in January, they'll need to plow a similar path around Atlanta, where Republicans are counting on voters in this historically conservative-leaning area to come home to incumbent Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler after a crucial slice of them turned on President Donald Trump.
"Style matters. Suburban voters ... did not always agree with the style the president took," said Generra Peck, a senior adviser to N2 America, a Republican research firm that tracked suburban voter sentiment this cycle. "The idea of the Democrats renting the suburbs is real. It's not a permanent part of the Democratic coalition because they're not aligned on policy."
In Atlanta's Fulton County and the five abutting metropolitan counties, Biden received about 50,000 more total votes than Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff in the November election. That drop-off left Ossoff finishing close to two percentage points behind Perdue statewide, even as Biden squeezed out an apparent win over the president.
"Some of that phenomena is probably Republicans who didn't want to vote for Trump, so they may have voted for Biden and flipped back over and voted for Perdue and Loeffler," acknowledged Jacquelyn Bettadapur, the chairwoman of Cobb County Democratic Party.
Raphael Warnock, an African American pastor and Democrat, was the top performing candidate in the other special Senate contest due to a divided Republican vote that is now likely to coalesce around Loeffler, given the national stakes of the race.
Democrats need to flip both seats in order to wrest Senate control away from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The inability of any candidate in either race to obtain more than 50% of the vote in November triggered simultaneous runoff campaigns that will culminate on the first Tuesday of the New Year.
But given the continued dominance of the Republican ticket throughout rural Georgia, Democrats' success is predicated on their ability to extend gains with suburban voters around Atlanta. In essence, it's a test of whether Biden's tenuous coalition can be replicated in a rapidly growing and diversifying state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 20 years.
"This is like the definition of a jump ball situation," said Bianca Keaton, the Gwinnett County Democratic Party chairwoman. "Persuading people to vote between D and R is not the fight at all. This race is decided on who gets more people to vote. ... It'll just be a test of wills between the two parties of who pulls it out."
The runoff electorate is expected to look different, but no one is quite sure by how much. In the last U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia in 2008, another presidential election year, turnout plummeted 43% between the two elections, though control of the Senate wasn't on the line.
Some Democrats are calculating that Trump's base won't return in the numbers they would if he was still atop the ballot. An aide to Ossoff noted that Maine's Susan Collins was the only Republican to win a marquee Senate race this year in a state that wasn't carried by the president. A hand recount of presidential balloting in Georgia has been ordered and is underway, but Biden's 14,000-vote lead is viewed as largely secure.
"Republicans don't know how to win and run without Trump on the ballot," said the Ossoff aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
But the inverse is also a possibility: That the surge of Democratic-inclined voters chiefly motivated by the removal of Trump will contract through the winter and sit out the runoffs.
The possibility of significantly lower turnout has both parties underscoring urgency.
For Republicans, it's less about their individual candidacies than presenting themselves as saviors of the GOP-controlled Senate. Loeffler is currently on a "Save Our Majority" tour, bringing in Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to emphasize the immediate nationalization of the races.
A new Loeffler TV ad claims Warnock would "give the radicals total control." And Scott is self-funding his own commercial in the state, pleading: "Georgia, don't let these radicals change America."
There are early indicators that the Democratic candidates are also warming to an argument centered around Senate control. During a campaign stop in Macon on Wednesday, Ossoff said Democratic defeats would prevent the Biden administration from passing significant coronavirus relief. But he's also been conscious of breaking with national Democrats and even Biden.
In an interview with McClatchy in October, Ossoff said he didn't think there should be any discussion of tax increases on anyone "so long as we're in this economic crisis."
"I'll hold the Biden administration accountable," he said. "I'm not running to be a partisan soldier."
N2 America's research — a 22-week study of 36 college-educated suburban voters with varying voting histories in 15 battleground states — found this group to be uneasy with the Democratic Party's leftward march. Positions like 'cancel culture', higher taxes and defunding the police were viewed unfavorably, according to Peck.
That's why it's no surprise Republicans are racing to define Ossoff and Warnock with incendiary branding and, sometimes, outright false positions.
"Just as they talk about defunding the police, I can assure you, Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi intends to defund the military." said Republican Rep. Austin Scott during a stop promoting the candidacies of Perdue and Loeffler.
Heritage Action, a conservative group that has already dispatched 300 paid workers into the state with the goal of knocking on a half-million doors, signaled it is targeting Republican turnout in the Atlanta metro area.
"We want to take this message specifically to the suburban areas that may be discouraged right now," said Jessica Anderson, the group's executive director, referring to the president's defeat.
Republicans are also eying opportunities to seize on any progressives who are tapped for Biden's administration as proof points for their case.
"The minute he decides to nominate Bernie Sanders or someone like that to a Cabinet post, we get to say, 'See here's what we were talking about,'" said Jack Kingston, a former Republican congressman.
For their parts, Ossoff and Warnock are largely trying to keep the race focused on health care access during a pandemic — and raise cash through national media appearances.
"I'm not interested in defunding the police," Warnock said on MSNBC this week, before pivoting to an attack on Loeffler. "It's clear that she wants to defund their health care."
While both parties are attempting to register new voters, they realize that in all likelihood the bulk of those who understand the magnitude of what Senate control will mean for the next year in Washington are already participating.
Dave Silver, a Democratic voter in suburban Marietta who plans to cast ballots for Warnock and Ossoff, said ending the gridlock in Washington appeals to him, but also acknowledged it could backfire with some of his more conservative neighbors.
"People might want gridlock over a Dem Senate," he said.
