The special election that has consumed the country’s attention—and cost more than any House election in history—is finally here. Two months ago, the first round of voting sent Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel to a runoff for the congressional seat in Georgia’s 6th District. Polls have shown a close race as Democrats have staked their hopes on Ossoff to flip a Republican-held district for the first time under President Donald Trump. An Ossoff win would “carry a symbolic punch” as a rebuke of the president and an omen of things to come in the 2018 midterm elections.

The polls have just closed, and thanks to our friends at Decision Desk HQ, you can watch the results come in live right here:

Polls have also closed in South Carolina’s 5th District, where a special congressional election will determine who will succeed Mick Mulvaney following his appointment as director of the Office of Management and Budget in February. Republican Ralph Norman, a former state representative, is facing off against Democrat Archie Parnell, a former Goldman Sachs banker whose ad campaign has alluded to the fictional Frank Underwood, who represented the district in House of Cards. Norman is expected to win the district, which has been a Republican stronghold since a 2010 redrawing of district boundaries. Charleston’s Post and Courier reports that turnout for the election has been low, but, as in the Georgia race, the margin between Norman and Parnell could give a preview of both parties’ performance in the 2018 midterms.

Here are the live results from the South Carolina race:</s>(CNN) Once again, Democrats exceeded expectations in two special congressional elections. In the parlance of sports betting, their candidates "beat the point spread," the margin by which a favored team is expected to win. But what works in Vegas doesn't count for much in elections, where winning is the game.

In the four special elections to fill seats in the House of Representatives vacated by Republican incumbents to join President Donald Trump's Cabinet, the GOP has posted a 4-0 record. At the same time, the unsuccessful Democratic candidates in these special elections have vastly outperformed the party's nominees who ran in these same districts just eight month ago. And in the case of Tuesday's special elections in Georgia's 6th Congressional District and South Carolina's 5th Congressional District, the Democrats turned 20-point-plus blowout losses in 2016 into narrow four-point and three-point defeats, respectively.

But beating the spread hasn't gotten Democrats any new seats in Congress.

In Georgia, Republican nominee Karen Handel beat back a challenge from Democratic hopeful Jon Ossoff, 52%-48%, in a suburban district north of Atlanta that was supposed to be ripe for an upset, because it was the kind of college educated, largely upper-income turf where Hillary Clinton had performed well against Trump. Indeed, it had the highest share of voters with at least a four-year college degree of any Republican-held House district in the country. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump narrowly beat Clinton 48%-47%. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney swamped Barack Obama in this district by 61%-37%.

The night did not start off well for Ossoff. When the first returns based on early absentee votes from the north Fulton County portion of the district were posted, Handel held a 51%-49% advantage. That was an ominous sign because in the first-round primary back on April 18, Ossoff had dominated the early absentee tally with more than 60% of that vote. This was an indicator that Republican voters in the district were more focused and mobilized than they were in the primary when they had 11 candidates to choose from.

Ossoff defeated Handel by roughly 58%-42% in the DeKalb County portion of the district where there are more African-American voters, but it made up less than a fourth of the overall electorate in the district. Handel bested Ossoff in the Cobb County section, a GOP stronghold, which contained just over 30% of the voters, by the same 58-42% margin. The battle came down to Fulton County portion of the district, where almost half of the electorate resided. And when votes from the whiter, upscale neighborhoods Milton, Alpharetta and Roswell came in, Handel secured her victory, carrying Fulton by almost 53%-47%. Overall, roughly 260,000 were cast in this race, dwarfing the 210,000 who voted in the 2014 midterm election.

The big surprise of the night was how close Democrat Archie Parnell came to upsetting Republican Ralph Norman in the South Carolina CD 5 special election.

Norman managed to eek out a 51%-49% victory in a contest where there was surprisingly low turnout of about 88,000. In the 2014 midterm, almost 170,000 voters were cast.

Parnell won the southern portion of the district 57%-42%, which includes Fairfield, Lee and Sumter Counties with relatively high numbers of African-American voters. Norman won the smaller northwestern part of the district, 59%-40%, which includes Cherokee County next to the GOP stronghold of Spartanburg. But in York and Lancaster Counties, which include suburbs and exurbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, where more than half of the vote in the special election was cast, Norman, won 55%-44%.

Had the Democratic Party focused more attention and resources on the South Carolina special election, which was largely overshadowed by the contest in Georgia, it may have been able to pull off an upset. In the 2016 presidential race, according to party's own voter files, some 80,000 African-American voters in the district went to the polls. While not every one of them cast votes for Barack Obama, the vast majority surely did and they would have been disposed to backing the Democrat Parnell. In a race that was decided by less than 3,000 votes, an effective effort to mobilize the black vote in the district could have paid huge dividends.

If Democrats are going to retake the House in the 2018 midterms -- which is certainly possible given the over-performance of their candidates in this year's special elections -- they're going to have to extend their focus beyond the borders of high-educated suburban districts held by Republicans where Clinton fared well in the 2016 presidential election. While the Georgia race was a tempting target after Trump turned in a relatively weak showing there in 2016, it still leaned Republican and Romney had won the district by a whopping 24 percentage points in 2012. In 2016, Trump won South Carolina's 5th Congressional District by 19 points, but Romney won it by just 12 points and it had an African-American population more than twice as large as the Georgia congressional district.

Another lesson from this year's House races is the importance of the party's "bench," the pool of potential candidates you can recruit from. While Democrats are bullish about many of their 2018 House prospects, in these four special elections, the Democratic bench was pretty thin compared to the lineup that Republicans fielded.

In Georgia, Democrat Ossoff was a 30-year-old former congressional aide going up against a veteran pol in Handel, who was a former secretary of state and former chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. In South Carolina, Democrats turned to Parnell, a 66-year-old former managing director of Goldman-Sachs and ex-tax attorney for ExxonMobil, who also worked on the House Ways and Means Committee from 1976-1980. Republicans had as their standard-bearer Norman, a former five-term state legislator who had represented a chunk of vote-rich York County.

All told, Democrats had four political rookies on their team in these special elections, while Republicans had three candidates with significant experience in elected office and one who had narrowly lost a governor's race. That's an indication of how weakened the Democratic Party has become in the last decade at the state and local level, especially in red states.</s>Voters head to the polls on Tuesday in special elections to fill House seats in Georgia and South Carolina, vacated by congressmen who joined the Trump administration.

The most watched of the two races is Georgia’s election to replace former Republican Representative Tom Price, who was tapped to serve as President Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary. Democrat Jon Ossoff is locked in a neck-and-neck race against Republican Karen Handel in Georgia’s sixth congressional district, which has been a Republican stronghold for over a decade. Although Trump managed to pull out a win over Hillary Clinton in the district, he fared far worse than Mitt Romney in 2012, creating an opening that Democrats hope to exploit.

South Carolina’s special election has flown under the radar by contrast, largely because it lacks the suspense of Georgia’s race. Republican Ralph Norman is the heavy favorite to defeat Democrat Archie Parnell in South Carolina’s fifth congressional district, and is expected to win an election to replace former Republican Representative Mick Mulvaney, now the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Although the outcome of a single special election isn’t a reliable predictor on its own of what will happen in upcoming midterm elections, the contest in Georgia could nevertheless have a significant, and even immediate, national impact.

Democrats believe the tight race in Georgia may be their best opportunity to flip a House seat ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections, and send a message that backlash to Trump can help the party win elections in conservative parts of the country.</s>Republicans won close special elections Tuesday for two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives where the GOP narrowly passed the American Health Care Act just one month ago and ultimately will need to maintain support if the legislation will become law.

With 90% of the vote counted in Georgia’s 6th Congressional district, Republican Karen Handel was declared the winner over Democrat Jon Ossoff by six percentage points, which was enough for news outlets to call the race for her. Earlier Tuesday night in South Carolina, Republican Ralph Norman beat Democrat Archie Parnell by a narrower three-point margin.

The wins are good news for Republicans, which narrowly passed the American Health Care Act, also known as Trumpcare, by just four votes in the House last month. The AHCA remains controversial and sits before the U.S. Senate. It’s unclear what the Senate will ultimately do with the AHCA because Republican Senate leadership hasn’t made their healthcare bill available for public view, nor most of their own fellow Senators, according to media reports

Georgia’s 6th Congressional District was once held by former Republican House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and most recently Dr. Tom Price, picked by Trump to be U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary.

Like Price, the Republican running to replace him, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, supports the American Health Care Act, also known as Trumpcare. “The current GOP proposal working its way through the House of Representatives remains a work in progress, but it is on the right track,” Handel said on her website.

During the campaign for South Carolina’s 5th District seat that had been held by Mick Mulvaney before he was tapped by Trump to be White House budget director, Republican Norman said he supported the repeal and replacement of the ACA. Parnell, a former Goldman Sachs executive, supported the ACA and said he wanted to see fixes to the law.

Depending on what the Senate does with the AHCA, it will most likely have to be approved once again by the House of Representatives. The AHCA would cause 23 million Americans to lose coverage by 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said last month.</s>(CNN) Once again, Democrats exceeded expectations in two special congressional elections. In the parlance of sports betting, their candidates "beat the point spread," the margin by which a favored team is expected to win. But what works in Vegas doesn't count for much in elections, where winning is the game.

In the four special elections to fill seats in the House of Representatives vacated by Republican incumbents to join President Donald Trump's Cabinet, the GOP has posted a 4-0 record. At the same time, the unsuccessful Democratic candidates in these special elections have vastly outperformed the party's nominees who ran in these same districts just eight month ago. And in the case of Tuesday's special elections in Georgia's 6th Congressional District and South Carolina's 5th Congressional District, the Democrats turned 20-point-plus blowout losses in 2016 into narrow four-point and three-point defeats, respectively.

But beating the spread hasn't gotten Democrats any new seats in Congress.

In Georgia, Republican nominee Karen Handel beat back a challenge from Democratic hopeful Jon Ossoff, 52%-48%, in a suburban district north of Atlanta that was supposed to be ripe for an upset, because it was the kind of college educated, largely upper-income turf where Hillary Clinton had performed well against Trump. Indeed, it had the highest share of voters with at least a four-year college degree of any Republican-held House district in the country. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump narrowly beat Clinton 48%-47%. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney swamped Barack Obama in this district by 61%-37%.

The night did not start off well for Ossoff. When the first returns based on early absentee votes from the north Fulton County portion of the district were posted, Handel held a 51%-49% advantage. That was an ominous sign because in the first-round primary back on April 18, Ossoff had dominated the early absentee tally with more than 60% of that vote. This was an indicator that Republican voters in the district were more focused and mobilized than they were in the primary when they had 11 candidates to choose from.

Ossoff defeated Handel by roughly 58%-42% in the DeKalb County portion of the district where there are more African-American voters, but it made up less than a fourth of the overall electorate in the district. Handel bested Ossoff in the Cobb County section, a GOP stronghold, which contained just over 30% of the voters, by the same 58-42% margin. The battle came down to Fulton County portion of the district, where almost half of the electorate resided. And when votes from the whiter, upscale neighborhoods Milton, Alpharetta and Roswell came in, Handel secured her victory, carrying Fulton by almost 53%-47%. Overall, roughly 260,000 were cast in this race, dwarfing the 210,000 who voted in the 2014 midterm election.

The big surprise of the night was how close Democrat Archie Parnell came to upsetting Republican Ralph Norman in the South Carolina CD 5 special election.

Norman managed to eek out a 51%-49% victory in a contest where there was surprisingly low turnout of about 88,000. In the 2014 midterm, almost 170,000 voters were cast.

Parnell won the southern portion of the district 57%-42%, which includes Fairfield, Lee and Sumter Counties with relatively high numbers of African-American voters. Norman won the smaller northwestern part of the district, 59%-40%, which includes Cherokee County next to the GOP stronghold of Spartanburg. But in York and Lancaster Counties, which include suburbs and exurbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, where more than half of the vote in the special election was cast, Norman, won 55%-44%.

Had the Democratic Party focused more attention and resources on the South Carolina special election, which was largely overshadowed by the contest in Georgia, it may have been able to pull off an upset. In the 2016 presidential race, according to party's own voter files, some 80,000 African-American voters in the district went to the polls. While not every one of them cast votes for Barack Obama, the vast majority surely did and they would have been disposed to backing the Democrat Parnell. In a race that was decided by less than 3,000 votes, an effective effort to mobilize the black vote in the district could have paid huge dividends.

If Democrats are going to retake the House in the 2018 midterms -- which is certainly possible given the over-performance of their candidates in this year's special elections -- they're going to have to extend their focus beyond the borders of high-educated suburban districts held by Republicans where Clinton fared well in the 2016 presidential election. While the Georgia race was a tempting target after Trump turned in a relatively weak showing there in 2016, it still leaned Republican and Romney had won the district by a whopping 24 percentage points in 2012. In 2016, Trump won South Carolina's 5th Congressional District by 19 points, but Romney won it by just 12 points and it had an African-American population more than twice as large as the Georgia congressional district.

Another lesson from this year's House races is the importance of the party's "bench," the pool of potential candidates you can recruit from. While Democrats are bullish about many of their 2018 House prospects, in these four special elections, the Democratic bench was pretty thin compared to the lineup that Republicans fielded.

In Georgia, Democrat Ossoff was a 30-year-old former congressional aide going up against a veteran pol in Handel, who was a former secretary of state and former chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. In South Carolina, Democrats turned to Parnell, a 66-year-old former managing director of Goldman-Sachs and ex-tax attorney for ExxonMobil, who also worked on the House Ways and Means Committee from 1976-1980. Republicans had as their standard-bearer Norman, a former five-term state legislator who had represented a chunk of vote-rich York County.

All told, Democrats had four political rookies on their team in these special elections, while Republicans had three candidates with significant experience in elected office and one who had narrowly lost a governor's race. That's an indication of how weakened the Democratic Party has become in the last decade at the state and local level, especially in red states.</s>Ralph Norman, a Republican, defeated Archie Parnell, a Democrat, in a South Carolina special election on Tuesday in a U.S. House race.

Mr. Norman was expected to have an advantage over Mr. Parnell for the seat, which was vacated by Mick Mulvaney, now director of the Office of Management and Budget. However, Mr. Parnell kept the race relatively close, losing by just a few percentage points.

The race did not receive the same national focus as special elections in Georgia and Montana.

The Fifth District was redrawn to heavily favor Republicans after the 2010 elections. Mr. Mulvaney won his three re-election campaigns easily.

Live results for Georgia’s sixth congressional district »</s>Bipartisan love may be on display in Washington, but farther down the coast, a vicious political battle is underway for Georgia’s 6th District.

Groups hoping to influence the election have spent nine times more money attacking the candidates than they have running positive ads since the jungle primary in April, a Roll Call review on Friday of Federal Election Commission filings found.

The parties’ congressional arms have led the scorched-earth battle, each dropping roughly $5 million in the district since the primary. Nearly all that money went to attacking the opposing candidate.

Huge contribution totals going directly to the candidates have also boosted the campaigns, though that fundraising has mostly been directed toward Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff. He reported raising $23.6 million through the end of May, while Republican Karen Handel brought in $4.3 million.

Not all that money, of course, came from within the suburban Atlanta district, or even from the state. Just about 13 percent of the donations to Ossoff that totaled more than $200 came from Georgia donors.

Handel, who’s received 45 percent of her money from within the state, has hit Ossoff on the issue — voters in Georgia, she said earlier this month, “are not interested in people from California, Massachusetts and New York buying this seat.” The Congressional Leadership Fund, which has spent at least $3.5 million since the primary to help Handel, has also made that a central line of attack.

Ossoff narrowly missed winning the once deep-red seat — vacated in January by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price — outright during the April open primary.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, another special election is set for Tuesday between Democrat Archie Parnell and Republican Ralph Norman.

The Palmetto State’s 5th District — previously represented by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney — isn’t seen as the same kind of fertile ground for Democrats to pick up a GOP-leaning seat. President Donald Trump carried the district by 19 points in 2016, according to calculations by Daily Kos Elections, and Mulvaney beat his opponent by a similar margin.

Norman has outperformed Parnell in fundraising by about 70 percent, though neither has brought in anything close to the amounts raised in Georgia. Also different than the Georgia race: Most of the money donated to Norman and Parnell has come from within their home state.

The national parties’ congressional campaign committees have gotten involved in South Carolina, though in a much more modest way than in Georgia. The DCCC announced earlier in June it would funnel $275,000 into Parnell’s bid, and the GOP committee has invested $100,000 in the race in a joint ad buy with Norman.

Outside spending from other organizations has also been lower. Only two conservative outside groups — the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund —have put up their own cash since the primary there last month, and both have stayed under $10,000.

Simone Pathé contributed to this report. Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call on your iPhone or your Android.</s>(CNN) Once again, Democrats exceeded expectations in two special congressional elections. In the parlance of sports betting, their candidates "beat the point spread," the margin by which a favored team is expected to win. But what works in Vegas doesn't count for much in elections, where winning is the game.

In the four special elections to fill seats in the House of Representatives vacated by Republican incumbents to join President Donald Trump's Cabinet, the GOP has posted a 4-0 record. At the same time, the unsuccessful Democratic candidates in these special elections have vastly outperformed the party's nominees who ran in these same districts just eight month ago. And in the case of Tuesday's special elections in Georgia's 6th Congressional District and South Carolina's 5th Congressional District, the Democrats turned 20-point-plus blowout losses in 2016 into narrow four-point and three-point defeats, respectively.

But beating the spread hasn't gotten Democrats any new seats in Congress.

In Georgia, Republican nominee Karen Handel beat back a challenge from Democratic hopeful Jon Ossoff, 52%-48%, in a suburban district north of Atlanta that was supposed to be ripe for an upset, because it was the kind of college educated, largely upper-income turf where Hillary Clinton had performed well against Trump. Indeed, it had the highest share of voters with at least a four-year college degree of any Republican-held House district in the country. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump narrowly beat Clinton 48%-47%. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney swamped Barack Obama in this district by 61%-37%.

The night did not start off well for Ossoff. When the first returns based on early absentee votes from the north Fulton County portion of the district were posted, Handel held a 51%-49% advantage. That was an ominous sign because in the first-round primary back on April 18, Ossoff had dominated the early absentee tally with more than 60% of that vote. This was an indicator that Republican voters in the district were more focused and mobilized than they were in the primary when they had 11 candidates to choose from.

Ossoff defeated Handel by roughly 58%-42% in the DeKalb County portion of the district where there are more African-American voters, but it made up less than a fourth of the overall electorate in the district. Handel bested Ossoff in the Cobb County section, a GOP stronghold, which contained just over 30% of the voters, by the same 58-42% margin. The battle came down to Fulton County portion of the district, where almost half of the electorate resided. And when votes from the whiter, upscale neighborhoods Milton, Alpharetta and Roswell came in, Handel secured her victory, carrying Fulton by almost 53%-47%. Overall, roughly 260,000 were cast in this race, dwarfing the 210,000 who voted in the 2014 midterm election.

The big surprise of the night was how close Democrat Archie Parnell came to upsetting Republican Ralph Norman in the South Carolina CD 5 special election.

Norman managed to eek out a 51%-49% victory in a contest where there was surprisingly low turnout of about 88,000. In the 2014 midterm, almost 170,000 voters were cast.

Parnell won the southern portion of the district 57%-42%, which includes Fairfield, Lee and Sumter Counties with relatively high numbers of African-American voters. Norman won the smaller northwestern part of the district, 59%-40%, which includes Cherokee County next to the GOP stronghold of Spartanburg. But in York and Lancaster Counties, which include suburbs and exurbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, where more than half of the vote in the special election was cast, Norman, won 55%-44%.

Had the Democratic Party focused more attention and resources on the South Carolina special election, which was largely overshadowed by the contest in Georgia, it may have been able to pull off an upset. In the 2016 presidential race, according to party's own voter files, some 80,000 African-American voters in the district went to the polls. While not every one of them cast votes for Barack Obama, the vast majority surely did and they would have been disposed to backing the Democrat Parnell. In a race that was decided by less than 3,000 votes, an effective effort to mobilize the black vote in the district could have paid huge dividends.

If Democrats are going to retake the House in the 2018 midterms -- which is certainly possible given the over-performance of their candidates in this year's special elections -- they're going to have to extend their focus beyond the borders of high-educated suburban districts held by Republicans where Clinton fared well in the 2016 presidential election. While the Georgia race was a tempting target after Trump turned in a relatively weak showing there in 2016, it still leaned Republican and Romney had won the district by a whopping 24 percentage points in 2012. In 2016, Trump won South Carolina's 5th Congressional District by 19 points, but Romney won it by just 12 points and it had an African-American population more than twice as large as the Georgia congressional district.

Another lesson from this year's House races is the importance of the party's "bench," the pool of potential candidates you can recruit from. While Democrats are bullish about many of their 2018 House prospects, in these four special elections, the Democratic bench was pretty thin compared to the lineup that Republicans fielded.

In Georgia, Democrat Ossoff was a 30-year-old former congressional aide going up against a veteran pol in Handel, who was a former secretary of state and former chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. In South Carolina, Democrats turned to Parnell, a 66-year-old former managing director of Goldman-Sachs and ex-tax attorney for ExxonMobil, who also worked on the House Ways and Means Committee from 1976-1980. Republicans had as their standard-bearer Norman, a former five-term state legislator who had represented a chunk of vote-rich York County.

All told, Democrats had four political rookies on their team in these special elections, while Republicans had three candidates with significant experience in elected office and one who had narrowly lost a governor's race. That's an indication of how weakened the Democratic Party has become in the last decade at the state and local level, especially in red states.</s>South Carolina Republican Ralph Norman has won a special election on Tuesday to fill a House seat vacated by Mick Mulvaney.

Mulvaney left the seat to work as President Trump's budget director.

Norman, a former state representative, beat out Democrat Archie Parnell for the position. Norman was expected to win the race.</s>(FORBES) Republican Ralph Norman and Democrat Archie Parnell face off in Tuesday’s special election for South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District.

Norman, a former state representative, and Parnell, a former Goldman Sachs banker, are battling for the seat vacated by Republican Mick Mulvaney, who was confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget in February.
Republican Ralph Norman narrowly defeats Democrat Archie Parnell to win a U.S. House district in north-central South Carolina.