Democrat Jon Ossoff was leading by a large margin in an all-party House special election in Georgia on Tuesday night, but appeared unlikely to gain more than 50% of the vote, which would force a runoff election in June.

As of midnight Eastern, Ossoff had about 50.3% of the vote, with about 77% of precincts reporting, according to Edison Research. Technical problems were delaying the count late in the night. The tally from the remaining precincts, which are in more Republican-leaning areas, appear likely to drag Ossoff’s total below 50%. If the top candidate gets more than 50%, they win outright; if no one gets more than 50%, the top two candidates will face off in a runoff. Late Tuesday, experts were predicting Ossoff would end up with about 48%.

Some Democrats viewed the race as a referendum on President Donald Trump, and had hoped that an anti-Trump backlash would help them win the seat outright and build momentum to take back the House in 2018. Republicans have held Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, in Atlanta’s conservative suburbs, for decades, but Trump won the district by less than 2% in November.

The special election was held to fill the seat of former Rep. Tom Price, who was named Trump’s secretary of health and human services.

Republican Karen Handel, the state’s former secretary of state, was firmly in second place, with 18% of the vote, and in position to face Ossoff in June.

The Democratic establishment poured millions of dollars into the race as they rallied around the 30-year-old Ossoff, who faced 17 candidates in the open election. But while Ossoff will apparently handily win Tuesday’s race, Democrats worry splintered Republicans will unify in time for the June election, and keep the seat in Republican hands.

President Donald Trump weighed in on the race Tuesday in a series of tweets, saying Ossoff would be “a disaster” and noting that he doesn’t even live in the district.

Earlier Tuesday, Ossoff acknowledged living outside the district, saying he lives nearby with his girlfriend, who is attending medical school. Ossoff said he grew up inside the district and if he won, he would move back inside its borders.</s>Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District final election results are in, and the Democrats have a bit of good news – Jon Ossoff received 92,390 votes – which is 48.1% of the votes, according to The Associated Press.

While Karen Handel, a Republican, came in a distant second with 37,993 votes which represent 19.8% of the votes in the special election for a U.S. House seat in a Republican-dominated section of Georgia.

Please note 18 candidates were fighting in what was called the “bloody jungle primary” to fill the seat that was vacated when President Donald Trump selected Tom Price to be his Health and Human Services Secretary.

Because the liberal candidate was not able to cross the 50 percent threshold, he will now compete in a runoff on June 20th against Handel.

The race was supposed to make headlines just in Georgia, but it captivated the entire country and attracted a list of celebrities including Debra Messing, Samuel L. Jackson, and Alyssa Milano who were out campaigning in force for Ossoff.

Ossoff became a political star and raised $8.3 million for his campaign, more than quadruple that of his leading opponent.

He issued a statement after the results were announced: “No matter what the outcome is tonight, whether we take it all or we fight on, we have defied the odds, we have shattered expectations.”

He added: “We are changing the world and your voices are going to ring out across this state and across this country. We will be ready to fight on and win in June if it is necessary.”

Here are Georgia’s special 6th district election’s final voting results after all the votes were tallied:

It is not known why, but Trump took to Twitter, of course, to say his political party had won hours before the race was called.</s>The race for the seat vacated by United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District was close, but will ultimately be decided in a runoff in June.



CNN is projecting that with at least 77 percent of the votes in, a runoff will be required as no candidate on the ballot secured the requisite 50 percent of votes. Democrat Jon Ossoff will face Republican Karen Handel in June. Unofficial return numbers as reported by the Washington Post show Ossoff with 48.6 percent; Handel got less than 20 percent of the vote, but the threat of a Democrat in a seat that has long been held by the Republicans will surely be enough to mobilize the party into action.

Polls closed at 7 p.m., but the results have been delayed by what the Fulton County Board of Elections called a “rare technical error” with a memory card. Ossoff got a strong start with a 71 percent lead that shrank as the evening wore on. President Donald Trump took time out of his packed schedule of flying back and forth to Mar-a-Lago and hitting the links to tweet a flurry of shit about the election, urging Republicans in Georgia to get out and vote.

Because a true narcissist never rests, he even took the time to share his thoughts about the likely results of the election, taking credit for the results himself and spinning what was actually a loss for the Republicans into a win.

The “help” he refers to is a robocall he recorded urging Republicans to vote in the special election that lasted for over one minute.

The 6th district in Georgia has been held by the likes of Newt Gingrich and has been a Republican stronghold for over 40 years. Ossoff is a former congressional staffer and political newcomer who managed to raise a staggering $8 million ahead of this election. Handel is a woman who, as Secretary of State for Georgia, tried to restrict voter’s rights by requiring voters to prove their citizenship in order to vote, resulting in a lawsuit in 2008. Ossoff nearly flipped a solid-red district full of wealthy conservatives with whom President Trump is proving to be very unpopular.

Speaking to the crowd at his party, Ossoff said “We will be ready to fight on and win in June if it’s necessary. Bring it on.”</s>In a congressional special election in suburban Atlanta last night, Jon Ossoff, a thirty-year-old Democrat, won far more votes than any Republican challenger, but not quite enough to avoid a runoff with a former Georgia secretary of state named Karen Handel. The progressive energy of the first months of the Trump Administration had gathered behind Ossoff, and his campaign raised more than eight million dollars, an astonishing amount, much of it in small donations from around the country. Some of the progressive enthusiasm had to do with the sense of possibility—prosperous Southern suburbs trended toward Hillary Clinton in the Presidential election—but it was also about the sheer thrill of planting a flag in enemy territory. The seat, in Georgia’s Sixth District, was once held by Newt Gingrich. Speaking around midnight, Ossoff conceded that the election might soon move to a runoff. “But let me tell you this,” he said. “There is no doubt that this is already a victory for the ages.” His chances in the runoff, two months away, are something like fifty-fifty.

Ossoff, who was raised in the district and attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, looks his age, with an undergraduate’s flop of hair, and for much of the campaign his youth had been the main talking point about him. Republicans spent a million dollars to air an advertisement that featured Ossoff playing Han Solo in a video made by his college a-cappella group. But Ossoff’s youth also gave him an outsider sheen, which helped to amplify his appeal to grassroots progressives. One biographical detail, much repeated, was that Ossoff owns only two suits, one gray and one blue.

Despite these sartorial restrictions, Ossoff has spent most of his working life on Capitol Hill, as a staffer for the Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson, who represents Georgia’s Fourth District, also in the Atlanta suburbs. Ossoff managed the identity-politics currents of the Democratic Party adeptly. His early campaign literature showed him linking arms, Selma-style, with the civil-rights hero and longtime Congressman John Lewis, of Georgia’s Fifth, whose endorsement he had secured. When he was attacked for living just outside the Sixth District, he pointed out that he was doing so to “support” his girlfriend, Alisha Kramer, who is finishing up medical school at Emory.

Ossoff has a precision most first-time candidates lack. When asked by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews what he made of President Trump bombing Syria, Ossoff said, enunciating his consonants, “Well, I think if U.S. intelligence confirmed that the Syrian military struck civilians with chemical weapons, then a swift, punitive, limited strike was a reasonable response, but any further action would require congressional approval, and we can’t get drawn into the ground there.” It didn’t seem strange at all, once you got past the Han Solo stuff, that Ossoff would be the face of the Democratic Party. He is exactly the kind of figure that the institutional Democratic Party has launched toward office for decades. What did seem strange was that he has become the face of a broader cultural phenomenon: the resistance.

It hasn’t been obvious, during the initial months of the Trump Administration, what form the furious opposition to him would take. The new President had campaigned as a populist, and he took an obvious glee in insulting his party’s graybeards and its pieties. But the new President’s early failures—his hastily designed travel ban and attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act, and the widely reported bickering and chaos among the White House staff—have quickly dulled the transformational gloss. The underlying drift of Trump’s policies has been toward a much more familiar, and less popular, conservatism. The President, who is by historical standards extremely unpopular, was active in the Ossoff election, but only as a tweeter of Republican talking points. One of Ossoff’s slogans was at once pointed and helpfully broad: “Make Trump furious.”

One big question about the Democratic Party after the 2016 election was how significant the rift between Bernie Sanders’s supporters and Hillary Clinton’s would continue to be. But the new Administration’s failures have allowed the Party’s center to hold. Institutional Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff have become leaders of the anti-Trump resistance in Washington. The Party is moving to the left, but it has not adopted the Sanders campaign’s agenda. Much of the grassroots energy and financing for Ossoff and the other Democratic special-election candidate, James Thompson, of Wichita, Kansas, came from the progressive community Daily Kos, but even there the sentiments toward the Sanders wing are complicated. When Sanders tweeted out criticism of the Democratic Party for failing to put more money into Thompson’s candidacy, David Nir, the Daily Kos political director, noted that Sanders’s robust fund-raising organization had sat out the Kansas race.

The Party isn’t Sanders’s, at least not yet. But, in the eventful interim between Barack Obama and whoever comes next, Ossoff has found the center of gravity in the Party, in a broad resistance to Trump that does not abandon the Party’s basic optimism about social pluralism, or the melding of business and social justice. The Democrats are moving to the left by increments, but there is not yet evidence of the kind of ideological lurch that gripped the Republicans during the Tea Party era.

The runoff election between Ossoff and Handel in the Georgia Sixth will be a more basic test of the partisanship in that district. But, if Democrats continue to do better than expected in special elections in conservative districts, it will likely mean that more talented liberals will run for office, and fewer talented conservatives. Georgia is particularly fertile recruiting ground for Democrats, with Atlanta’s mayor, Kasim Reed, one of the Party’s most adept politicians, available as a potential candidate for statewide office. Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general who led the legal resistance to Trump’s Muslim travel ban, is at home in Georgia as well. Surely both have followed Ossoff’s campaign, and noted how a savvy Democrat could position himself both as the face of the national resistance and a defender of the center of American life. They must have noticed how a liberal Democrat, running in a historically conservative district, could become a campaign’s main character.</s>After a hard-fought, expensive race, Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff narrowly missed the required majority vote to secure victory in the special election to represent Georgia's 6th Congressional District. Ossoff, who ran against 18 other candidates, will now advance to a runoff election in June against Karen Handel, who received the highest percentage of the vote among Republicans.

“I am truly humbled by the faith and trust the people of Georgia’s 6th District have placed in me,” Handel said in a statement after the results were announced. “Throughout my life, I have been called resilient, tough, even stubborn and it is that same fighting spirit I will take with me to Congress. But the hard work isn’t over yet."

But who is Karen Handel? Ossoff has been in the national headlines for weeks, as it became clear he had a unique chance to turn a red district blue. But the 55-year-old Handel, who was competing with 17 other Republicans, now finds herself there, too, especially after President Donald Trump, who has frequently tweeted about the race, lavished praise on her and called her to congratulate her.

Here's what you need to know about Handel.

She has a history in Georgia politics (and runoff elections)

Although relatively unknown on the national stage, Handel is a familiar name in Georgia. She served as Chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners from 2003 to 2007, and as Georgia's Secretary of State from 2007 to 2010. (She was the first Republican elected to serve as Georgia's Secretary of State). In 2010, Handel resigned from her position as Secretary of State to run for Governor. She advanced to a primary runoff election in that race, but lost to Nathan Deal, who still serves as Governor. Deal congratulated Handel on Tuesday on advancing to a runoff against Ossoff, tweeting , "Team Deal is with you."

In 2013, Handel mounted a campaign to run for the U.S. Senate to replace Saxby Chambliss, who was not seeking reelection, but did not win the Republican primary.

Former Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed Handel in her pursuits for both Governor and Senator.

Handel has toed a fine line on Trump during the race

Although Trump took partial credit for Handel advancing to the runoff — "glad to be of help!" he tweeted - she rarely mentioned him during her campaign, according to the Associated Press.

Handel told Fortune in an interview that, if she wins in the June runoff, her allegiance is to the constituents in her district.

"I think if I have the privilege of being the next congressman for the 6th District, my responsibilities are to represent the 6th District," she said. "Are there areas where that aligns with the president and his agenda? Absolutely. But I am also extremely independent minded and have an issue of standing up for things I believe in."

Handel told Fortune that Trump was very gracious in their phone call, and their conversation gave her an opportunity to express her appreciation for his help getting out the vote.

She was involved in a controversy of Planned Parenthood funding

In 2011, Handel was named Senior Vice President of Public Policy for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, one of the leading organizations fighting breast cancer. In January of 2012, the foundation announced it was suspending its funding of Planned Parenthood. (One month later, the foundation changed course, and decided to retain funding following a public backlash). The Huffington Post reported that year that Handel was the primary force in the decision to pull funding, citing internal e-mails and an inside source.

In February 2012, Handel resigned from her position at Susan G. Komen, and denied she had a role in the decision not to renew funding. "The only place for politics in all of this came from Planned Parenthood — when they launched this vicious, vicious attack on a great organization and perpetrated what was nothing short of a shakedown to coerce a private entity to give them grants," she told CNN affiliate WXIA in 2012.

Handel published a book about her experience, Planned Bullyhood: The Truth Behind the Headlines about the Planned Parenthood Funding Battle with Susan G. Komen for the Cure , in November 2014.

Although Handel states on her Congressional campaign website that she opposes abortion, she does not mention anything about Planned Parenthood funding.

Like Trump, Handel had a business career before entering politics

Handel has been involved in politics for over two decades, serving in roles ranging from Deputy Chief of Staff to former Georgia Governor Sunny Perdue, to Deputy Chief of Staff for then-Vice President Dan Qayle's wife Marilyn during the first Bush Administration. But she also has a career in business as a public relations executive. She served as Director of Public Relations for the Southeast for the major accounting firm KPMG from 1994 to 1996; as the head of Global Communications and Public Affairs for the eyewear company CIBA Vision from 1997 to 2001; and as President/CEO of the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce from 2001 to 2003.</s>Democrat Jon Ossoff blew away his Republican opposition in a special election Tuesday, but fell just short of 50% of the vote needed to avoid a runoff to represent Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early Wednesday morning, CNN was among news outlets projecting a runoff. With 88% of the vote tallied, Ossoff had 48% and he needed 50% to avoid a June runoff. Ossoff faces second place finisher, Republican Karen Handel, who tallied less than 20% of the vote in a field of 18 , most of them Republicans.

“We have defied the odds,” Ossoff said Tuesday night. “We have shattered expectations.”

Heading into Tuesday’s special election, Ossoff, a 30-year-old former Congressional staffer raised more than $8 million from across the country. Donors to Ossoff see the candidate as a vessel to level a blow against President Donald Trump, who in recent days became preoccupied with the Democrat and attacked him on Twitter.

“Jon Ossoff’s first-place finish tonight is a huge triumph for the resistance and for progressives, who boosted Ossoff to the top of a crowded race in a Republican-leaning district,” Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org said.

Democrats expect the donations for the June runoff against Handel to continue to roll in, particularly given Trump’s deteriorating popularity. And Democrats are also emboldened by Ossoff’s performance in a House district that has been held by Republicans for 38 years, most recently by Dr. Tom Price, a fierce opponent of the Affordable Care Act who was confirmed last month to be U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration.

“Less than six months ago, a Republican won this district by more than 20 points,” Galland said of Price. “Tonight, a progressive Democrat got the most votes in a seat Newt Gingrich once held. The reason is clear: voters are rejecting Trump and his policies, especially the highly unpopular GOP-led health care repeal proposals like Trumpcare.”

The GOP’s effort to repeal and replace the ACA with Trumpcare could loom large in the June runoff. Price was one of the most vocal opponents of the ACA, President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, and he regularly led dozens of futile attempts to repeal the law when Democrats controlled the White House.</s>Atlanta (CNN) Democrat Jon Ossoff fell just short Tuesday of capturing a House seat in a longtime conservative stronghold in Georgia, serving a reminder to Republicans of President Donald Trump's unpopularity.

Ossoff received 48.1% of the vote, shy of the 50% he needed to win outright. He and the other top vote-getter -- Republican candidate Karen Handel, who received 19.8% -- will now face off in a runoff election in June, a likely uphill climb for Democrats now that the Republican vote in a reliably GOP district will be consolidated behind one candidate.

The hotly contested race carried major implications as a gauge of the President's popularity -- and Trump himself seemed to grasp the high stakes, playing a direct role in its closing days.

Democrats saw it as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Trump and congressional Republicans fearful that he could drag down the party in the 2018 midterms -- while also delivering a psychic boost to an energized progressive base.

They nearly pulled it off. It was a strong showing for the Democrats in an unusual "jungle primary" in a district that Mitt Romney won by 23 points in 2012, and where Republican Rep. Tom Price was re-elected with nearly 62% of the vote in 2016 before being named Trump's health and human services secretary.

JUST WATCHED Trump releases robocall in GA special election Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Trump releases robocall in GA special election 01:24

"There is no doubt that this is already a victory for the ages," Ossoff told supporters late Tuesday night. "That no matter what the outcome is tonight -- whether we take it all or whether we fight on -- we have survived the odds. We have shattered expectations. We are changing the world. And your voices are going to ring out across this state and across this country."

Even after Ossoff left the stage, many supporters stuck around, chanting, "Flip the Sixth!"

Trump 'glad to be of help'

A little-known 30-year-old former congressional staffer, Ossoff quickly emerged as an online fundraising superstar. Progressive activists led by the liberal blog Daily Kos pumped $8.3 million into Ossoff's campaign largely because it represented their best odds out of four special elections for previously Republican-held House seats of flipping one and sending a message.

Trump erased any doubt the contest was all about him when he waded into the race at the last minute. Trump recorded a robocall to Republicans in the district and attacked Ossoff on Twitter repeatedly on Monday and Tuesday. The President tweeted after midnight that he was "Glad to be of help!" -- even though the district was competitive largely because of Trump's unpopularity with the white-collar white voters who make up much of its voting base.

Handel said on Twitter Wednesday morning that Trump had called her.

Handel told CNN's "New Day," that despite preventing a Ossoff from an out right when, the situation in the district is "all hands on deck" for Republicans.

"We know what is at stake here and I don't think that this is about any one person," Handel told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "We all have to rise above it -- that it is about the district that has a long legacy of Republican leadership."

The near-death experience for Republicans -- on the heels of one a week earlier in Kansas, where Democrats nearly 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 difficult for Trump to advance his agenda on Capitol Hill.

In Tuesday's results, Democrats saw more evidence of a playing field for the 2018 midterm elections that has drastically expanded -- and given the party's 10 senators up for re-election in states that Trump won some breathing room.

"To me, what's amazing is that we continue to see this level shift across the country, a 20-point swing, that puts about 123 Republican seats potentially in play," said Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas.

"At that point, very little is off the map, and getting the 24 seats we need to take back the House is suddenly a real possibility, GOP gerrymander or not," Moulitsas said. "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."

Attention shifts to runoff election

Republicans have long believed that -- particularly with such high turnout in Tuesday's contest -- Ossoff would near his high-water mark in the jungle primary and have little room to grow his support in the runoff.

There are few parallels to draw because the race is a special election with unique dynamics, and because of the unusual primary in which the top two finishers would advance, regardless of party.

One that would trouble Democrats and reassure Republicans came in a 2006 special election for California's 50th District House seat. There, Democrat Francine Busby won 44% of the vote in the jungle primary -- well ahead of Republican Brian Bilbray's 15%. But in the one-on-one runoff, Busby was stagnant, earning 45%, while Bilbray surged to 49% support in the conservative district.

Democrats, meanwhile, saw Handel -- whose 55th birthday was Tuesday -- as the Republican against whom they would fare the best, in part because of her conservative stances on social issues and attacks on Planned Parenthood.

Handel lost a 2010 race for governor and a 2014 Republican Senate primary and was accused of overspending as a county commissioner in a 2017 jungle primary attack ad from the conservative Club for Growth. She was hammered by Republican foes in the runoff who aligned themselves with Trump -- raising the prospect that those Trump voters could skip the runoff entirely.

Handel's efforts as secretary of state to purge Georgia's voter rolls by requiring voters to prove their citizenship led to fights with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

In an interview last month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez -- who led the Civil Rights Division during President Barack Obama's first term -- said voters would hear "a lot" about Handel's efforts to require voters to prove their citizenship if she advanced to the runoff.

"Secretaries of state matter, and when they're good, then people can actually vote who are eligible to vote. And when they're following the ALEC playbook of the far right, they make it harder for people to vote," Perez said, referring to the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.

Perez told "New Day" on Wednesday said Trump was too celebratory too early.

"He spiked the football quite early, Chris," Perez told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "(I'd) rather be Jon Ossoff than (Republican candidate) Karen Handel right now."</s>Karen Handel, the Republican who advanced to a runoff in the closely watched Georgia special election, has a controversial history with Planned Parenthood .

Handel, who will face Democrat Jon Ossoff in the June runoff, was a Senior Vice President at the Susan G. Komen Fund in 2012, when the organization sparked fierce criticism for its decision to revoke its funding for Planned Parenthood. That decision was quickly reversed, and Handel left Komen shortly after. But five years later, in the gender-charged political climate of the Donald Trump era, Handel is hesitant to revisit the issue.

During a telephone interview with Handel on Wednesday, a day after she topped 17 other Republicans to make the runoff, her spokeswoman stopped the conversation short when Fortune asked about Planned Parenthood, her work at Komen, and how she would work with the Trump Administration if elected.

Handel called back about 20 minutes later, and would not say whether she supports the Republican push to defund Planned Parenthood. She said she supports more funding for women's health care, and that the best mechanism for that is local health centers. "I want women to have more access to quality care and the access to healthcare for women is not through Planned Parenthood, it is through community health centers across the state," Handel said.

MORE What to Know About Karen Handel, the Woman Who Made the Georgia Special Election Runoff

Handel is running to represent the suburban Atlanta district long represented by Tom Price, who opposes abortion and is now Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services.

In January of 2012, the Komen foundation, which sponsors Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure, announced it was suspending funding for Planned Parenthood. Handel had been Senior Vice President of Public Policy for the organization since 2011. Shortly after, amid fierce backlash, the foundation reversed course. The Huffington Post , citing internal e-mails and one unnamed Komen insider, reported at the time that Handel was the primary force in the decision to pull funding. Handel soon resigned. She published a book about the experience in 2014, titled Planned Bullyhood: The Truth Behind the Headlines about the Planned Parenthood Funding Battle with Susan G. Komen for the Cure .

In her interview with Fortune , Handel reiterated points she made in the book — that she had done the job at Komen she was expected to do as Vice President of Public Policy, part of which included finding ways to disengage from Planned Parenthood. She has said that priority was based on financial reasons, not political ones.

Planned Parenthood is still holding Handel — who would be the first female Republican Congresswoman from Georgia — responsible for the imbroglio, calling her an "anti-health care extremist" in a statement following the results of the first round of the election.

" Handel does not understand what’s at stake for Georgia women and families, campaigning on an extreme agenda of blocking access to care at Planned Parenthood health centers and believing government should intervene women’s health care decisions," said Candace Fowler, a Board Chair for Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates.

In 2010, when she was running for Governor of Georgia, Handel wrote in a blog post : "Let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood."

But Handel did not reiterate that sentiment when pressed Wednesday about the bill Trump signed into law this month, which allows states to withhold federal funds from Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide abortions. She only said the decision should be up to the state lawmakers: "That's a state issue and our legislature will deal with it."</s>DUNWOODY, Ga. — A Georgia congressional election is headed to a runoff that's shaping up as a referendum on President Donald Trump ahead of crucial midterm elections next year.

Democrat Jon Ossoff, a little-known 30-year-old former congressional staffer, fell a few percentage points shy of an outright victory Tuesday amid an 18-candidate scramble in Georgia's 6th Congressional District. His strong showing in the conservative district, driven by fundraising from out-of-state donors, underscored Democrats' eagerness to take back House control in 2018.

Republican Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, finished a distant second in the crowded field, qualifying for the June 20 runoff.

Handel treated Trump gingerly throughout the campaign in a district he barely won in November. But the president called to congratulate her Wednesday morning, and Handel said she hoped he would come to campaign for her.

"I would hope so," Handel said on CNN. "I mean look, all Republicans, it's all hands on deck for us."

Trump had attacked Ossoff in recent days and took to Twitter again Wednesday morning to crow about the outcome in Georgia after Democrats' failure to win a different special election in Kansas last week.

"Dems failed in Kansas and are now failing in Georgia. Great job Karen Handel! It is now Hollywood vs. Georgia on June 20th," Trump wrote, alluding to celebrity donations that came in for Ossoff.

Republicans hold a 237-193 majority in the House so Democrats would need to pick up more than 20 seats to retake control in the 2018 midterm. Another special election is coming up in Montana next month.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez insisted Democrats have the momentum in the Georgia race and made clear his party will not be shy about tying Handel to Trump.

"She's the person who supports Donald Trump's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I wonder if Donald Trump and she are going to campaign on that issue in her district," Perez said on CNN.</s>Democrat Jon Ossoff took first place in Tuesday’s “jungle primary” in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, but he appeared to fall short of winning a majority of the vote and securing the empty seat.

Mr. Ossoff, who ran on the slogan “Make Trump Furious,” needed more than half the votes to steer clear of a runoff, and he hung close to that mark for several hours after polls closed at 7 p.m.

But his vote share dipped below 50 percent before midnight and CNN declared early Wednesday that the race was indeed headed into a runoff between Mr. Ossoff and the second-place finisher, Republican Karen Handel.

That result was widely viewed as good news for Republicans, who will have a second chance to unite against Mr. Ossoff following a campaign fraught with intrapary warfare, including a series of GOP attacks against Mrs. Handel, a former secretary of state.

With 84 percent of the precincts reporting early Wednesday, Mr. Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker and former congressional aide, had won 48.6 percent of the vote, putting him well out in front of his closest challengers in the 18-candidate race, who all happened to be Republicans.

Mrs. Handel collected 19.5 percent of the vote, followed by former Johns Creek city council member Bob Gray with 10.4 percent, former state Sen. Judson Hill at 9 percent, and former state Sen. Dan Moody with 8.7 percent.

Mr. Ossoff struck an optimistic note at his election night party.

“We will be ready to fight on and win in June if it is necessary, and there is no amount of dark money, super PAC negative advertising that could overcome real grassroots energy like this,” Mr. Ossoff said to cheers. “So bring it on because we are courageous, we are humble, we know how to fight.”

Bragging rights were on the line for Democrats and Republicans in the race for the seat in the wealthy Atlanta suburbs. Since 1979, the GOP has held the seat, which Tom Price vacated to become secretary of Health and Human Services.

Both sides spun the outcome in their favor, including President Trump, who urged Republicans to realize they wcan defend the seat once the race became a two-person contest.

“Despite major outside money, FAKE media support and eleven Republican candidates, BIG ‘R’ win with runoff in Georgia. Glad to be of help!” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.

Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, which invested in the race, said Democrats had “failed their first real test of the 2018 cycle.”

“Tonight showed Democrats aren’t ready for prime-time and running the same liberal, out-of-touch candidates that simply appeal to the rabid base won’t cut it,” Mr. Hunt said.

Progressive groups, meanwhile, said Mr. Ossoff’s performance underscored the strength of the “resistance” against President Trump.

“The mere fact that we’re even talking about a competitive race in a congressional district Democrats haven’t held in over 40 years, let alone Jon Ossoff’s sound victory tonight, is a testament to the growing strength of a nationwide, grassroots movement that’s looking for leaders ready to stand up to the Republicans empowering Donald Trump’s hate-fueled agenda,” said Jim Dean, chair of Democracy for America, which endorsed Mr. Ossoff early last month.

Mr. Trump called for Republican voters to force a runoff race earlier in the day, urging Republicans to get out to the polls to ensure that the GOP gets another chance this summer to pick a successor to Mr. Price, who had won 60 percent of the vote in his last three re-election races.

“Force runoff and easy win! Dem Ossoff will raise your taxes-very bad on crime & 2nd A,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.

Democrats had hoped to build off the stronger than expected showing last week in the deep red 4th Congressional District in Kansas, where James Thompson came within 7 percentage points of defeating Republican Ron Estes.

Five months earlier, Mr. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in that same congressional district by 27 percentage points.

After being criticized for not investing more in Kansas, national Democrats on Tuesday highlighted their involvement in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which Mr. Trump won by less than 2 percentage points in the November election.

Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, cut robocalls over the final 48 hours of the campaign urging voters to head to the polls to “elect a representative to Congress who will stop Donald Trump and the GOP Congress and who will actually care about people.”

The DNC also targeted voters through a 5-figure digital ad buy and the Association of State Democratic Chairs spearheaded a phone banking effort with state parties around the country.

The national attention helped Mr. Ossoff raise more than $8.3 million for his bid.

Democrats and liberal groups have been dreaming about landing an electoral blow against Mr. Trump, who has struggled to deliver on his vows to repeal and replace Obamacare and overhaul the federal tax code, and also backed away from the hard-line he promised to take against China during the election.

“Tonight once again proves that momentum is clearly on the side of the Resistance and that Donald Trump has no mandate for his dangerous, reckless, and hateful policies,” said Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org.

The NRCC and the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is dedicated to protecting the House GOP majority, also put their imprint on the race, investing in ground troops and anti-Ossoff television ads.

The GOP criticized Mr. Ossoff for not living in the congressional district, accused him of puffing up his resume, and questioned whether he can be trusted in a television ad that featured an image of Osama bin Laden and highlighted how Mr. Ossoff produced films for Al Jazeera.

Before the results started trickling in, some Republican suggested a poor showing for their candidates could serve as a good wake-up call for the party ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections, where Democrats will be angling to capture control of the House and Senate - putting them in a stronger position to block the Trump agenda.

The crowded GOP field in the Georgia race splintered Republicans.

Sen. David Perdue backed Mr. Moody, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida endorsed Mr. Hill. Bruce Levell, who spearheaded minority outreach for the Trump campaign, campaigned with ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Mrs. Handel, meanwhile, was endorsed by former Sen. Saxby Chambliss but was attacked by the conservative Club for Growth, which endorsed Mr. Gray.

Mrs. Handel has received support from the Ending Spending anti-spending advocacy group funded by the Ricketts’ family.
No candidate reaches a majority vote, so the first- and second-place finishers, Jon Ossoff (48.1%) and Karen Handel (19.8%), will face off in a runoff election on June 20, 2017.