Georgia Democrat Ossoff Holds Advantage With Independent Voters: Exit Polls

© Michael M. Santiago/Getty Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff speaks to the press at Dunbar Neighborhood Center in Atlanta, Georgia on January 5, 2021.

Independent voters are slightly favoring Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff over Georgia’s incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue in Tuesday night’s runoff election, according to an exit poll.

Although independent voters were closely divided between Ossoff and Perdue, the Democrat had a slight advantage among the group, according to a preliminary CNN exit poll. The poll was conducted for the National Elections poll, a group of media outlets including CNN, by Edison Research. Researchers gathered data by surveying 5,260 Georgia voters who cast ballots in person on election day or during early voting, along with conducting telephone interviews with some other early voters and those who cast mail-in ballots.

2020 Election By The Numbers

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Ossoff and Perdue are taking part in the runoff because neither candidate achieved 50 percent in November’s election, although Perdue had around 88,000 more votes than Ossoff after all the ballots were counted. Polling conducted prior to the runoff suggested that the candidates were essentially deadlocked heading into Tuesday.

Experts have cautioned that exit polls are particularly prone to issues of accuracy, with preliminary polling data even more likely to be less than accurate. The COVID-19 pandemic has also changed the manner in which exit polls are conducted, since a smaller portion of the voters are available to be interviewed in person on Election Day.

Newsweek reached out to the Ossoff and Perdue campaigns for comment.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

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