IANA American and, thanks to the whole Trump debacle and US dopers, I’ve learned a lot about the US political system. However, I don’t understand the Georgia run-off thing.
Is this a run-off of a Nov 3rd down-ballot tie vote or is it something completely unrelated?
Two Senate seats were up for election in Georgia (one is a special election to fill a remainder of the term); in neither case did a candidate win an absolute majority so the top two candidates for reach seat will respectively compete in a run off election on January 6th. Most states only require a plurality, but some states (mostly in the South, but Maine uses instant-runoff) have a two round system.
Two senatorial elections. You have to get fifty percent or there’s a runoff. No candidates hut that magic number.
Yes. Both Georgia senate elections on 11/3 failed to have a candidate achieve 50%+ so there are going to be runoffs for both seats (both seats are open at the same time due to a retirement in one of them, I think).
Samantha Bee just covered this in her latest Full Frontal. It was instituted by a racist who didn’t want white voters splitting their votes and letting someone, er, darker get elected.
To further clarify, the run-off is limited to the top two vote-getters in the general election so one of the two will achieve a majority (barring an exact tie) in the Runn-Off election in January.
That’s sort of what I was assuming but thanks all for the info and confirmation.
It’s also a bit unusual for a state to have two Senate elections at once: About a third of the Senate is up for election every two years (they have six-year terms), and it’s arranged such that any given state has their senate terms come up in different years. But sometimes a senate seat ends up vacant: They resign, or go into some other office, or die. In this circumstance, each state has its own rules on how the missing senator gets replaced. A not-uncommon rule is that there’s a special election in the next election year for someone to finish the remainder of that term (after which they’ll be up for re-election on a six-year schedule like any other senator). So Georgia had a vacancy in the Senate, and it happened to be in the year when their other senator was already up for re-election, and so they had two Senate elections this year.
Also note that these were two completely separate elections. Some candidates were running for one seat, and some were running for the other. The fact that both just happened to go to a runoff is pure coincidence (beyond the fact, of course, that there was probably a very high correlation between the votes for both by party).
And since we’re being all educational in here 
I’ll just add that in most states the Governor can immediately appoint someone to serve in the vacant Senate seat until (as @Chronos notes) the next regularly scheduled general election. That’s why Kelly Loeffler is running as an incumbent – she was appointed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to fill the seat vacated when Senator Johnny Isakson resigned early. And whoever wins between her and Raphael Warnock will be back on the ballot again in 2022 when he or she (presumably) will run for the full six-year term.
An interesting difference between vacancies in the Senate and the House of Representatives is that a vacant House seat can only be filled by election. If a House member dies or resigns, the seat sits empty until a special election can be held. These elections generally do NOT wait until the next regularly scheduled election, but rather are scheduled according to state laws within a few weeks or months of the vacancy.
This has implications for the current Congress, as President-elect Biden has named several Democratic House members to positions in his Administration. Because the Democrats have a narrow majority in the House, these seats being open may temporarily complicate what Democrats are able to do legislatively.