who will control the
u.s. Senate in 2021?

by APM RESEARCH LAB STAFF | Updated Jan. 19, 2021 | 5:45 p.m. CST

All eyes will be on the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—but it is not the only transition of power taking place in DC this week.

Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are to be sworn into the U.S. Senate Wednesday afternoon, replacing Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. At that moment they will officially tip the balance of power from Republican to Democratic control.

Democrats will control the Senate by virtue of Vice President Harris’ constitutional power to cast tie-breaking votes. The Democratic Caucus will include 50 members, including two Independent Senators, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, who officially affiliate themselves with the Democrats.

Republicans will hold 50 seats, but with Harris casting the tie-breaking vote, they will formally be the minority party, and the powerful Senate Majority Leader position will switch from Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) to current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Ossoff and Warnock narrowly won their seats in Georgia’s hotly contested January 5th runoff elections. The results of their elections were officially certified yesterday by Georgia’s Sectary of State.

Alex Padilla, California’s current Secretary of State and Governor Gavin Newsom’s appointment to replace Kamala Harris, also will be sworn into the Senate on Wednesday. Padilla will become the first Latino senator from California. Warnock will become Georgia’s first Black senator. Ossoff will be the state’s first Jewish senator and, at age 33, the Senate’s first member from the millennial generation. All three will be sworn in by Kamala Harris, the nation’s first female Vice President.

The winding road to Democratic control

Following an anxious four days of waiting after the 2020 general election, nearly all major news networks declared that Joe Biden had exceeded 270 electoral votes and won the presidency. Democrats also retained control of the U.S. House, although their majority has been trimmed back (222 to 211, with two seats yet uncalled and Louisiana’s 5th district now requiring a special election after Republican Congressman-elect Luke Letlow’s death).

But the U.S. Senate still hung in the balance, a tantalizing prize for Democrats dreaming of a trifecta, and a bulwark against a Democratic agenda for Republicans who seek to hold onto some power under the new Biden administration that will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.

Republicans claimed 50 Senate seats after the November election, two more than the 48 seats claimed by the Democratic Caucus at that time. (The Democrats’ tally includes the two Independent Senators, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, who caucus with the Democrats.)

The Senate’s balance of power teetered on the fulcrum of Georgia’s two seats, both of which were decided by the January 5th runoff election. Georgia law requires candidates to be voted in with at least 50% of the votes cast; if a candidate does not reach that threshold the two candidates who received the highest number of votes face one another in a runoff election.

Georgia’s runoff election featured these match-ups:

1. Incumbent David Perdue (R) versus Jon Ossoff (D). According to Georgia’s Secretary of State, Perdue received 88,000 more votes than Ossoff, but came up just shy of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff. This is in part due to the 115,000 votes that went to Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel who will not appear on the January ballot.

2. Incumbent Kelly Loeffler (R) versus Raphael Warnock (D). Georgia had a second Senate seat up for election this cycle because of Senator Johnny Isakson’s resignation at the end of 2019 due to health concerns. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp appointed Kelly Loeffler (R) to the seat, making her the incumbent in this special election.

   According to the Secretary of State, challenger Raphael Warnock (D) led in the November election with a plurality of about one-third of the vote, while Loeffler received just over one-quarter. However, a second Republican on the ballot, current Georgia congressman Doug Collins, received about one-fifth of the vote. Only the two leading candidates appear on the January ballot.

Although Georgia had long been considered a red state (it hadn’t voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1992), this year’s election has revealed there is an emergent plum color in the Peach State. The initial tally indicated President-elect Biden won the state’s 16 electoral votes by less than 13,000 votes, only a fraction of a percentage point out of the nearly 5 million votes cast.

While the outcome had been confirmed after one hand recount (triggered by Georgia state law due to the narrow margin), President Trump asked for another. That machine recount resulted in some votes moved in Trump’s favor, but still showed Joe Biden winning the state by nearly 12,000 votes. On Dec. 7, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that he would re-certify the election results, affirming Biden’s win.

Four flips for Democrats, one for Republicans

Going into the election, the Democrats held 47 seats in the U.S. Senate while the Republicans held 53.

The Democrats have succeeded in flipping four seats: in Colorado, where former Governor John Hickenlooper easily ousted incumbent Cory Gardner, in Arizona, where former astronaut Mark Kelly (also husband to former Rep. Gabby Giffords) defeated incumbent Martha McSally, and in Georgia, where Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent Kelly Loeffler and Jon Ossoff defeated incumbent David Perdue.

The Republicans have wrested back one previously Democratic seat in Alabama, where one-term incumbent Doug Jones was emphatically denied a second term by Tommy Tuberville, a former college head football coach, most recently at the University of Cincinnati.

Outgoing freshman Sens. Jones (D–Ala.) and Gardner (R–Colo.) were both considered vulnerable, as each was elected with less than 50% of the vote in 2018.

Republican Thom Tillis’s victory over Cal Cunningham (D) in North Carolina—by less than 2 percentage points according to the North Carolina Secretary of State’s latest tally—is one of several close Senate races that were not called until after election night. In addition to the seats from Georgia, close races also include the victories of incumbent senators Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), which were not called until Nov. 4.

Current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) won a seventh term over challenger Amy McGrath. Now that the Georgia runoffs have brought the Senate to an even 50-50 split between those voting with Democrats and those voting with Republicans, the powerful Senate Majority Leader position will go to a Democrat, once Kamala Harris is sworn in as Vice President. Constitutionally, the Vice President provides a tie-breaking vote in the U.S Senate. This sort of vice-presidential tie-breaking is not uncommon: Mike Pence has voted to break ties in the Senate at least 13 times since 2017.

With COVID-19 continuing to decimate Americans’ health and economic security, the new Congress will have their work cut out for them.

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