Tom Price is headed for a runoff after Democrat Jon Ossoff narrowly missed winning a majority of votes. Therefore, he will face a runoff election in June against Republican Karen Handel, the no. 2 vote-getter.
And in the near term, Republicans find themselves facing the same task - figuring out how to fulfill President Trump's agenda - that rallied Democrats in the first place.
However, while they did make impressive strides in traditionally Republican districts, they have yet to prove they can win federal elections in the era of Trump.
They almost pulled it off. He took all but one percent of the vote secured by Democratic candidates, which means that Republicans as a whole won a narrow majority.
Tom Price exited the 6th District earlier this year to become President Donald Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services.
"We want everybody who is supportive of Republicans, so absolutely", Handel told The Associated Press after taking a congratulatory call from Trump Wednesday morning. "That no matter what the outcome is tonight - whether we take it all or whether we fight on - we have survived the odds. And your voices are going to ring out across this state and across this country". Ossoff, 30, a documentary filmmaker, is also a former congressional staffer.
Trump erased any doubt the contest was all about him when he waded into the race at the last minute.
That attention has unnerved some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who attacked Ossoff via his Twitter account. Handel is a former Georgia secretary of state and has largely avoided talking about Trump, who lagged other Republicans in the district last November.
Georgia House Race Down to 2 Candidates; Runoff Set for June
He just "hopes to have a Republican elected", Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. "It is all Republicans, all hands on deck". In this special election to fill the seat vacated by Tom Price, now the HHS Secretary, 50% or more was needed to win.
National leaders in both major parties agreed the Georgia race is a prime test run for the 2018 election cycle, because the affluent, well-educated district is replete with the kind of voters Democrats must win over to have any chance at reclaiming a House majority and winning more governor's races. "It also potentially puts the Senate in play, while certainly protecting our endangered red-state incumbents. All of this, and we're still in Trump's supposed "honeymoon" period!"
CBS News etimates showed up to twenty-point gaps between the early and Election Day votes as the county reports came in - perhaps reflecting a late surge in Republican interest in the race and what appears to have been strong, late turnout efforts from the GOP.
There's something of a three-strikes rule in politics - lose three big races in a row, and you're out as a top candidate.
Price regularly won this seat north of Atlanta without breaking a sweat, but Trump won the region by just 1.5 percentage points previous year.
"For the second week in a row, Democrats have misread the electorate, falling short to Republicans and wasting millions of dollars in the process", McDaniel concluded. But in the one-on-one runoff, Busby was stagnant, earning 45%, while Bilbray surged to 49% support in the conservative district. Jon Ossoff came out top in a crowded field of 18 candidates competing to fill a vacant seat in the House of Representatives.
That distinguished her from other Republican contenders she left to squabble over who is more loyal to Trump.
Even more, Handel was forced to resign from her role as vice president of public policy at the major breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure after she worked to cut the charity's funding to Planned Parenthood.
Republicans have emerged from two close-call elections rattled but not yet defeated, but with fresh, frightening evidence of the additional political peril that nearly certainly lies ahead.
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