Instead, Ossoff, who would become the youngest member of Congress if elected, forced a June runoff with the GOP front-runner, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, which will check the temperature of the 2018 races. While Ossoff ended up as the top vote-getter in a crowded field of 18 candidates vying to fill the seat left vacant by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, he ended up short of the votes needed to win the seat outright.
Democrat Jon Ossoff came within two percentage points Tuesday of winning the seat outright in a race widely viewed as a referendum on the President's popularity.
The victor will succeed Republican Tom Price, who resigned the seat to join Trump's administration as health secretary. On Tuesday, however, voters in the affluent Atlanta suburbs turned out for a special election to hand a 30-year-old Democrat a whopping 30-point lead over his closest competitor.
A Georgia congressional election in a historically conservative district is headed to a runoff that raises the stakes in an early measure for President Donald Trump and both major parties ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Trump, a businessman and TV celebrity who previously had not held political office, has blasted Ossoff as a "super Liberal Democrat".
Ossoff and Handel will campaign head-to-head for the next two months and the race is seen by many as a bellwether election with national implications.
The outcomes in Kansas and Georgia also serve notice that GOP candidates may struggle to handle Trump, who engenders an intense loyalty among his core supporters but alienates many independents and even Republicans.
"We defied the odds and shattered expectations - and we are ready to fight on and win in June".
Ossoff, a former congressional staffer, entered the race as a long shot - a Democrat hasn't represented the district since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won his first congressional race in 1978.
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Handel is expected to now enjoy unified Republican support, and high-profile Republican leaders were quick to back her.
As is typical in special elections, voter turnout was down significantly from the general election six months ago.
"They were ringing my phone off the hook", said Kim Fambro, 45, who said the outreach convinced her to vote for Ossoff.
"To Ossoff's credit, he got a lot of latent Democratic voters who probably haven't been participating in congressional elections because the election of a Republican had been a foregone conclusion", continued Gillepsie.
The Georgia 6th is not in this category, but it's close - again, Trump only won the district by 1.5 percent.
Veteran Democratic strategists say they're not anxious about sustaining the same level of enthusiasm.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has reported that Republicans and Democrats have spent a combined $14 million on ad blitzes.
"The Democratic base is totally engaged, totally fired up, and anybody that thinks that is going to go away I think is whistling past the political graveyard", Cole said.
Ossoff almost pulled off a major upset win in a district comprising some of Atlanta's wealthiest, best-educated suburbs - an area that has been represented in Congress by Republicans for almost four decades. "Millions of dollars poured into that state by supporters of the Democrat Jon Ossoff, got 48% of the vote overnight, " he stated as he seemed to lament the fact that there would have to be a runoff election in June.
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