Democrats: Georgia special election is referendum on President Trump

Democrats have poured resources into a special election in Georgia hoping to focus liberal outrage against Trump to steal a House seat from the GOP.

18 candidates are vying for the U.S. House seat vacated by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA6) as he accepted the nomination to be President Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services.

There are five democrats and eleven republicans in the race, but Democrats rallied around Jon Ossoff as their favorite early on while republicans appear split among their large candidate pool similar to the early primary race for president in 2016.

Ossoff has continually polled around 40% with his leading republican challenger, Karen Handel, just pulling in 16%. The numbers have encouraged the DNC to position the race as a referendum on president Trump.

In order to win the seat, a single candidate must take more than 50% of the vote and no candidate is likely to do that on Tuesday. The top two candidates will meet in a runoff on June 20th.

Democrats have poured resources into the race as they see an opportunity to turn a red district blue and create momentum going into the 2018 midterm elections.

It is unclear how the vote will shake out if it comes down to just Ossoff and Handel in a runoff. If Ossoff still pulls in only 40% of the vote, this will be the second race that Democrats lose after spending valuable time, money and effort to win.