Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff is just below 50 percent in his quest to wrest Georgia's Sixth Congressional District from Republican control.
Democrat Jon Ossoff fell short of the grabbing 50% of the vote in Tuesday's race in Georgia. There are plenty of areas that are more Democratic-friendly for the party to win the 24 seats needed to take back the House in 2018, but an outright victory by Ossoff would have been a major boon to their fundraising and recruiting.
Trump recorded robo-calls and tweeted seven times about the Georgia race in the days leading up to the election, urging Republicans to "get out and vote!" That massive influx of cash, coupled with a lack of any other serious Democrats in the race and a disdain among many Republicans in the district for Trump's in-your-face style, made for a surprising opportunity for Democrats in the south - a region where the party has been decimated over the last decade. But he resigned the seat to become Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services.
Five Democrats will appear on the ballot, but Ossoff is the GOP's greatest threat.
Ossoff said on CNN that Trump was misinformed about his positions and that he was focused on issues affecting the region, not Washington.
Ossoff had fought for a majority vote with the help of millions of dollars from restive activists, a lot of them outside the district.
With 88 percent of precincts reporting, Ossoff had 48 percent to Handel's 20 percent in the 18-candidate field in the 6th District, The Associated Press reported. Represented by Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, it went on to elect Price who regularly won by landslide margins against nominal opposition. The California Democrat remains an unpopular figure in the district.
The contest was seen by some as an early referendum on the Trump presidency. Not only did no other candidate in the Georgia race have almost as much money - replicating Ossoff's strategy would be practically impossible in 2018, because Democrats would likely be unable to raise comparable coffers for all the other Democratic candidates running in red districts.
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In the video, Stephens told Godwin the name of his girlfriend and said, "She's the reason that this is about to happen to you". A makeshift memorial sits along a fence Monday, April 17, 2017, near where Robert Godwin Sr., was killed in Cleveland.
But Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker and former congressional aide, told energized supporters before all the returns were in that he and Democrats "shattered expectations" with their performance.
The fact that a Democrat took the most votes in the 6th District came as a surprise to everyone, said Kennesaw State University political science professor Kerwin Swint.
Handel, who raised $463,744, was also targeted by a number of her Republican competitors. "Dem Ossoff will raise your taxes-very bad on crime & 2nd A.", Trump tweeted Tuesday.
Even with Ossoff's unprecedented fundraising success, Republicans together outspent the Democrat by almost two-to-one.
Mr Ossoff, a film-maker who lives just outside the electoral district in Georgia, declared as a candidate in January, with the Democratic party quickly coalescing around his candidacy. Unlike in previous years, when Republicans were expected to easily win, bright blue signs dotted manicured lawns.
Democrats had already been aiming to nationalize the race against Trump, campaigning on a slogan of "Make Trump Furious".
The near-death experience for Republicans - on the heels of one a week earlier in Kansas, where Democrats almost flipped a deep-red district - could still have the effect of leading GOP lawmakers in competitive states and districts to seek distance from the President, making it even more hard for Trump to advance his agenda on Capitol Hill.
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