WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rev. Raphael Warnock’s stunning victory and Jon Ossoff’s apparent win in the Georgia Senate runoffs is the culmination of a grassroots surge that was years in the making.
This election broke early voting records, achieved record turnout among youth and Black voters, and built a tidal wave of democracy that elected the first Black Democratic senator from a formerly Confederate state. And it is on the cusp of electing the son of a Jewish immigrant—and the youngest Senator since Joe Biden first took office.
Led by Stacey Abrams and civil and voting rights organizations like Fair Fight, Fair Count, New Georgia Project, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, GALEO, Black Votes Matter, and many others, these grassroots activists helped turn out 3 million early votes and register at least 114,000 new voters who hadn’t turned out in November, most of them people of color. And Georgia, which had the highest November turnout of young voters in the states where voter participation data was available, saw another youth vote surge in this election.
Democracy isn’t a natural resource that we can take for granted, or assume will always be there. The last four years have certainly proven that. We must all do the daily work of democracy to keep it intact, secure, and strong. That’s the guiding principle at the heart of NOW’s mission—and that’s what the people of Georgia did, and what they’ll do again in elections to come.