Results of the 2020 Senate Elections

U.S. Senators serve six-year terms and elections to the Senate are staggered over even years so that only about 1/3 of the Senate is up for reelection during any election.

The New York Times noted that 35 Senate Democrats, and 30 Senate Republicans, were not up for reelection in 2020. In order to hold a majority in the Senate, a party must have more than 50 Senators. Typically, Independent candidates vote with the Democratic party.

The 2020 Senate election resulted in 50 Democratic Senators – including the Democratic Senators who were not up for reelection, and the two Independent Senators, (Senator Bernie Sanders – Vermont, and Senator Angus King – Maine.) The Democratic Party flipped 4 seats.

The 2020 Senate election also resulted in 50 Republican Senators – including the Republican Senators who were not up for reelection. The Republican Party flipped one seat.

It appears to be a tie, but that’s not entirely accurate. The Democrats flipped more seats than the Republicans did, which means the Democrats now have the majority in the Senate, and in the House, with Democratic president Joe Biden.

The rules for the Senate state that if a piece of legislation results in votes that cause a tie, the Vice-President is to cast their vote and break the 50-50 tie. The President and the Vice-President are from the same party. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will be the person who gets to break a tie in the current Senate.

The Guardian has details about the 2020 Senate races. They get their information from The Associated Press. Here are the results:

Alabama:

Tommy Tuberville: (Republican): 1,392,076 votes (50.2%) – WINNER, flipped seat
Incumbent Doug Jones (Democrat): 920,487 votes (39.8%)

Alaska:

Incumbent Dan Sullivan (Republican): 191,112 votes (54%) – WINNER
Al Gross (Democrat): 146.068 votes (41.3%)
John Wayne Howe (Libertarian): 16,806 votes (4.7%)

Arizona:

Mark Kelly (Democrat): 1,716,467 votes (51.2%) – WINNER, flipped seat
Incumbent Martha McSally (Republican): 1,637,661 votes (48.8%)

Mark Kelly is married to Gabrielle Giffords, a former Arizona congresswoman who made headlines when she became the victim of an assassination attempt, from which she later recovered.

Jared Lee Loughner, who was 22 years old, shot Giffords in the head at her event at a grocery store called “Congress On Your Corner”. Jared Lee Loughner also wounded several other people and killed six people. HE was later sentenced to seven life terms plus 140 years in prison.

Mark Kelly became an astronaut in 1996, in the same class as his twin brother Scott. He spent 340 days on the International Space Station gathering data about himself, while his brother Scott carried out identical tests on earth. The two were compared after Mark Kelly returned home.

Arkansas:

Incumbent Tom Cotton (Republican): 793,871 votes (66.5%) – WINNER
Ricky Harrington (Libertarian): 399,390 votes (33.5%)

Colorado:

John Hickenlooper (Democrat): 1,731,114 votes (53.5%) – WINNER, flipped seat
Incumbent Cory Gardner (Republican): 1,429,492 votes (44.2%)
Raymone Doane (Libertarian): 56,262 votes (1.7%)

John Hickenlooper is a former Democratic governor of Colorado. He was the mayor of Denver, Colorado, from 2011-2019. He announced that he was running for president of the United States on March 4, 2019. On August 15, 2019, he suspended his presidential campaign.

Delaware:

Christopher Coons (Democrat): 291,804 votes (59.4%) – WINNER
Lauren Witzke (Republican): 186,054 votes (37.9%)
Mark Turley (Libertarian): 7,833 votes (1.6%)

Georgia:

The Senate elections in Georgia were contentious. Georgia Senator David Perdue was up for reelection.

Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler had been appointed by the Georgia Governor Brian Kemp after Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson (Republican) retired. This meant that Senator Kelly Loeffler had to run in a Special election in order to keep her seat.

The Guardian reported the results of the first set of Georgia elections:

David Perdue (Republican): 2,462,617 votes (49.7%)
Jon Ossoff (Democrat): 2,374,519 votes (47.9%)
Shane Hazel (Libertarian): 115,039 votes (2.3%)

There were two separate Senate elections happening: one between Raphael Warnock and incumbent Kelly Loffler, and the other between Jon Ossoff and incumbent David Perdue.

None of the candidates reached 50%, so it went to a runoff with the top two candidates: Perdue and Ossoff.

Raphael Warnock (Democrat): 1,617,035 votes (32.9%)
Kelly Loeffler (Republican): 1,273,214 votes (25.9%)
Doug Collins (Republican): 980,454 votes (20%)

None of the candidates reached 50%, so it went to a runoff with the top two candidates: Warnock and Loeffler.

The Washington Post reported that these two runoffs happened because no candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote in November. When that happens, Georgia election law says the top two vote-getters must go to a runoff.

Georgia is also in a unique position by having both Senate seats up right now. One is a regular election, as Sen. David Perdue (R) finishes his first six-year term and runs for reelection. The other is a special election after a Republican senator retired last year. Georgia’s governor appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffer (R) to the seat, and she’s now running in her first election for a full term.

David Perdue is a Republican. In 2014, he entered the U.S. Senate race (despite having no direct political experience). He defeated his Democratic opponent Michelle Nunn, and officially took office in the Senate. In 2016, David Perdue became one of Donald Trump’s greatest allies.

Britannica included the following information about David Perdue:

…Shortly thereafter the United States faced the COVID-19 global pandemic. Although Perdue initially downplayed the seriousness of the virus, it was later revealed that he made several advantageous stock trades that resulted in allegations of insider trading. These developments came as he faced a tough reelection bid…

The New York Times posted an article on December 2, 2020, titled: “2,596 Trades in One Term: Inside Senator Perdue’s Stock Portfolio”. It was written by Stephanie Saul, Kate Kelly, and Michael LaForgia. From the article:

…Last week, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department had investigated the senator for possible insider trading in his sale of more than $1 million worth of stock in a financial-analysis firm, Cardlytics. Ultimately, prosecutors declined to bring charges. Other media outlets have revealed several trades in companies whose business dealings fall under the jurisdiction of Mr. Perdue’s committees…
…The Times analyzed data compiled by Senate Stock Watcher, a nonpartisan website that aggregates publicly available information on lawmakers’ trading, and found that Mr. Perdue’s transactions accounted for nearly a third of all senators’ trades reported in the past six years. His 2,596 trades, mostly in stocks but also in bonds and funds, roughly equal the combined trading volume of the next five most active traders in the Senate…
…Nearly half of Mr. Perdue’s FireEye trades, for example, occurred while he sat on the cybersecurity panel, a role that potentially could have provided him with nonpublic information about companies like FireEye. During that period, FireEye landed a subcontract worth more than $30 million with the Army Cyber Command, which had operations at Fort Gordon, in Mr. Perdue’s home state. In 2018, Mr. Perdue reported capital gains of up to $15,000 from FireEye trades.
And as a member of the Senate banking, housing, and urban affairs committee since 2017, Mr. Perdue bought and sold shares of a number of financial companies his panel oversaw, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Regions Financial…
…Mr. Perdue’s decision to sell off his stock holdings this past April followed criticism of trades made by several senators in coronavirus-sensitive stocks just after they had attended a Senate briefing on Jan. 24.
In the aftermath of those sales, the Justice Department opened investigations into trading by Ms. Loeffler; Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina; his Republican colleague James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma; and Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat. All have since been closed except the Burr inquiry, which is also nearing an end, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Mr. Perdue, whose office has said he did not attend that briefing, was among those who bought and sold some of those stocks, including Pfizer, in the weeks that followed.
Mr. Perdue purchased up to $260,000 worth of Pfizer stock between Feb. 26 and Feb. 28, in the early days of a market downturn. On the 28th, he issued a news release reporting that he had regularly attended briefings led by the coronavirus task force; records subsequently showed that he had bought the third tranche of Pfizer shares that same day.
The news release also emphasized that the U.S. government was expediting the development of a coronavirus vaccine. And in March, Pfizer announced its partnership with a German biotechnology company, BioNTech, to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
Mr. Perdue had frequently traded Pfizer stock before this year. He had rarely traded another stock he bought in the early stages of the U.S. outbreak, DuPont, which, as a manufacturer of personal protective equipment, also stood to benefit from the coronavirus response. (Mr. Perdue purchased some shares in DuPont on Jan. 24, the day of the Senate briefing, and additional shares later.)
In late February and early March, Mr. Perdue sold stock in Caesars, an entertainment company whose casino business would be hard-hit by the pandemic, but purchased shares of Disney and Delta, additions to his portfolio that seem to run counter to any suggestion that he was trading on insider information about the virus…

On June 20, 2017, CNN posted an article titled: “Who is Jon Ossoff?” It was written by Madison Park and Eric Bradner. From the article:

…Born in Atlanta, Ossoff grew up in the Northlake area. He attended Georgetown University where he got a bachelor’s degree in foreign service and then worked as an aide to Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson.
He got his master’s in international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In 2013, Ossoff began working with former BBC journalist Ron McCullagh. He used money from an inheritance to buy a stake in McCullagh’s investigative film company and renamed it Insight TMI, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution…
…Earlier this year, after Tom Price vacated his seat in Georgia’s sixth district to join the Trump administration as the new Health and Human Services secretary, Ossoff decided to join the race…
…Ossoff gained key endorsements from Johnson and civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis…

The New York Times posted the result of the runoff between Ossoff and Perdue:

John Ossoff (Democrat): 2,269,738 votes (50.6%) – WINNER – flipped seat
David Perdue (Republican): 2,214,506 votes (49.4%)

On August 28, 2019, Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson (Republican) announced that he would retire at the end of 2019 due to his declining health.

When a Senator leaves their position – due to retirement, death, or moving up to a cabinet or secretary position, the governor of their state can appoint someone else to temporarily take that seat. The appointed person must be from the same party as the senator who is leaving.

On December 4, 2019, Governor Brian Kemp (Republican) posted a press release on his website titled: “Kemp Appoints Loeffler to U.S. Senate”. From the press release:

Today Governor Brian P. Kemp announced his appointment of successful businesswoman Kelly Loeffler to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Senator Johnny Isakson, effective December 31, 2019.
“From the farm to the New York Stock Exchange, Kelly Loeffler has lived the American Dream. I’m confident that she will work every single day to keep that same dream alive for our children, grandchildren, and generations to come. Kelly Loeffler will stand with the President, Senator Perdue, and their allies in the U.S. House and Senate,” said Governor Kemp. “I’m excited to appoint Georgia’s first female Senator in nearly 100 years – but, more importantly, I’m excited to appoint a life-long Republican who shares our conservative values and vision for a safer, stronger, Georgia…

On December 4, 2019, NPR posted an article titled: “Against Trump’s Wishes, Georgia Gov. Appoints Kelly Loeffler To Fill Senate Seat”. It was written by Brakkton Booker. From the article:

…While Kemp’s selection of Loeffler was widely expected, it nonetheless is a controversial choice in Republican circles. It has also touched off an intraparty fight waged by allies of President Trump, who reportedly wanted Kemp to go in another direction.
The president, who stumped for Kemp ahead of his narrow victory in Georgia’s gubernatorial race last year, reportedly wanted him to appoint Rep. Doug Collins, a staunch Trump ally and the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
Loeffler is the wealthy CEO of the financial platform Bakkt, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, as well as a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream WNBA franchise.
She will be just the second woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate, reports Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Stephen Fowler, who adds, “if she wins a special election next fall, she will be the first Georgia woman elected to the [U.S.] Senate.”…
…Loeffler has never held elective office. But once she’s sworn in, she will have to run for the Senate seat in each of the next two election cycles: a special election in 2020 and again for a full six-year Senate term in 2022, when Isakson would have been up for reelection…
Ahead of her appointment, Loeffler faced resistance from conservatives both inside and outside Georgia…

On April 13, 2020, NPR posted an article titled: “Stock Trades After Coronavirus Briefing Complicate Loeffler’s Reelection Bid”. It was written by Claudio Grisales. From the article:

A new U.S. senator from Georgia has come under fire for selling $20 million in stock after a briefing in the weeks building up to the coronavirus pandemic.
Republican Kelly Loeffler was appointed to her seat against President Trump’s wishes. Now, just three months into the appointment, Loeffler is fighting for her political life ahead of elections in November…
…Just a few months later, that trust and support hang in the balance. Loeffler is part of a group of senators – both Democrat and Republican – whose recent stock transactions are under new scrutiny.
Loeffler and her husband, who is the CEO of a company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, dumped millions of dollars in shares after she attended a closed-door Senate briefing on the coronavirus in January. The couple also picked up investments in companies that have benefited in the pandemic.
The details were shared as part of a 2012 law called the STOCK Act.…
…The STOCK Act stands for “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge.” Columbia University law professor John Coffee Jr. says Congress approved the law in the wake of studies showing lawmakers financially benefiting from their government work…
…Loeffler has vigorously defended herself in a round of interviews. She said the trades were made without the couple’s knowledge because they use a blind trust and a third party handles their transactions…

On June 16, 2020, Politico posted an article titled: “Senate Ethics Committee drops probe of Loeffler stock trades”. It was written by Marianne Levine. From the article:

The Senate Ethics Committee has ended its investigation into Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s stock trades, according to a letter sent Tuesday to the Georgia Republican.
The news comes three weeks after Loffler’s office said the Justice Department had also dropped its probe into her stock trades.
Deborah Sue Mayer, the Ethics Committee’s chief counsel and staff director wrote in the letter that the panel examined stock transactions made by both Loeffler and her husband Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange,
“Based on all the information before it, the Committee did not find evidence that your actions violated federal law, Senate Rules, or standards of conduct,” Mayer said. “Accordingly, consistent with its precedent, the Committee has dismissed the matter.”…

Information about Reverend Raphael Warnock is on his Warnock for Georgia page.

Reverend Raphael Warnock grew up in Kayton Homes public housing in Savannah… He and his eleven brothers and sisters were taught the meaning of hard work.
His father was a veteran, a small businessman, and a preacher. He spent the week hauling old cars to the local steel yard, and on Sundays he preached at a local church. Reverend Warmock’s mother grew up in Waycross, where she spent summers picking tobacco and cotton, and still lives in Savannah today. She worked hard to raise Raphael and his siblings to know that they could do anything they put their mind to.
Reverend Warnock enrolled at Morehouse College, and graduated with the help of low-interest student loans and Pell Grants. He earned a PhD. and was ordained in the ministry. Fifteen years ago, he was chosen to serve as the Senior Pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the former pulpit of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was the youngest pastor selected to serve in that leadership role at the historic church….

On March 9, 2020, AJC (Atlantic Journal-Constitution) posted an article titled: “Warnock, wife involved in dispute”. It was written by Stephen Deere and Greg Bluestein. From the article:

The Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, was accused by his wife of running over her foot with his car in a heated argument days before he filed paperwork to officially seek office, according to a police report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, was not charged with a crime by Atlanta police and an officer said in the report that medical officials didn’t find visible signs of injury in the foot that his wife said was struck by the vehicle. He flatly denied the allegation that he harmed his estranged wife, telling the AJC in an interview that “it didn’t happen.”…
…In a Saturday interview at his Decatur campaign office, Raphael Warnock said he and his wife separated in November and three weeks ago signed documents that aimed to resolve their divorce. But he said the two got into a sharp disagreement on Sunday night about her desire to take their two young children to visit relatives in Senegal.
“The divorce settlement secured in legal terms my parental rights in the case of international travel. I felt we needed to have that resolved before traveling internationally. It’s literally a mater of signing a form. That’s where a dispute arose.”…
…According to the report, shortly after Warnock arrived at his wife’s home on Monday, they began arguing about whether Raphael Warnock would allow his wife to apply for passports so that she could take their children to West Africa for her grandfather’s funeral.
Warnock told police that he had previously denied the request and that he didn’t have time to talk about it again, according to the report.
He told police that his wife refused to close the right rear passenger door of his car so that he could leave. He told authorities he began to “slowly” drive forward – and then heard his wife accuse him of driving over her foot.
The report said Ouleye Warnock was able to wiggle her toes and that Grady Hospital first-responders were “not able to locate any swelling, redness, or bruising or broken bones.”…

The New York Times posted the results of Georgia’s Special Election runoff between Loeffler and Warnock:

Raphael Warnock (Democrat): 2,288,923 votes (51.0%) – WINNER – flipped seat
Kelly Loeffler (Republican): 2,195,373 votes (49.0%)

On January 6, 2020, Reuters posted an article titled: “Georgia delivers Senate to Democrats with Warnock, Ossoff, wins”. It was written by Rich McKay and Nathan Layne. From the article:

Democrats on Wednesday completed a sweep of the two U.S. Senate seats up for grabs in runoff elections in the state of Georgia, giving the party control of the chamber and boosting the prospects for President-elect Joe Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda.
Raphael Warnock, a Baptist preacher from Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, beat Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler to become the first Black senator in the deep South state’s history while Democrat Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker who at 33 would become the Senate’s youngest member, beat Republican David Perdue.
The results would give Democrats narrow control of both chambers of Congress, making it easier to appoint liberal-leaning judges and advance legislative priorities from coronavirus relief to climate change when Biden takes office on Jan. 20…

On January 24, 2021, WABE posted an article from the Associated Press titled: “Warnock and Ossoff Carry John Lewis’ Legacy Into the U.S. Senate”. From the article:

…Most associated with the pursuit to secure and protect voting rights, Lewis led protesters in the 1965 Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he had his skull fractured by police, and was a driving force behind voting rights laws in the U.S. for decades.
Lewis was a parishioner of Warnock’s for years at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached and Warnock remains pastor. Warnock was called to Lewis’ bedside days before his death and presided over his funeral service.
Ossoff first met Lewis when, as a teenager, he was inspired by Lewis’ book “Walking With the Wind” and wrote him a letter. “I was inspired by how a person so young had taken a leadership role in the pursuit of justice and confronting the abuse of power, and was just in awe of his life,” Ossoff said in an interview with the Associated Press in December. Lewis wrote back and invited Ossoff to come work in his office for a few months, spawning a yearslong relationship between the two…

Idaho:

Jim Risch (Republican): 538,446 votes (62.6%) – WINNER
Paulette Jordan (Democrat): 285,864 votes (33.2%)
Natalie Flemming (Libertarian): 25,747 votes (2.9%)

Illinois:

Richard Durbin (Democrat): 3,278,930 votes (54.9%) – WINNER
Mark Curran (Republican): 2,319,870 votes (38.9%)
Willie Wilson (Libertarian): 237,699 votes (4%)

Iowa:

Joni Ernst (Republican): 864,997 votes (51.8%) – WINNER
Theresa Greenfield (Democrat): 754,859 votes (45.2%)
Rick Stewart (Libertarian): 36,961 votes (2.2%)

Kansas:

Roger Marshall (Republican): 727,962 votes (53.2%) – WINNER
Barbara Bollier (Democrat): 571,530 votes (41.8%)
Jason Buckley (Libertarian): 68,263 votes (5%)

Kentucky:

Mitch McConnell (Republican): 1,233,315 votes (57.8%) – WINNER
Amy McGrath: (Democrat): 816,257 votes (38.2%)
Brad Barron: (Libertarian): 85,386 votes (4%)

Louisiana:

Bill Cassidy (Republican): 1,228,908 votes (59.3%) – WINNER
Adrian Perkins (Democrat): 394,049 votes (19%)
Derrick Edwards (Democrat): 229,814 votes (11.1%)

Maine:

Susan Collins (Republican): 417,645 votes (51%) – WINNER
Sara Gideon (Democrat): 347,645 votes (42.4%)
Lisa Savage (Libertarian): 40,597 votes (5%)

Massachusetts:

Edward Markey (Democrat): 2,357,809 votes (66.7%) – WINNER
Kevin O’Conner (Republican): 1,777,765 votes (33.3%)

Michigan:

Gary Peters (Democrat): 2,734,568 votes (49.9%) – WINNER
John James (Republican): 2,642,233 votes (48.2%)
Valerie Willis (Libertarian): 50,597 votes (0.9%)

Minnesota:

Tina Smith (Democrat): 1,556,522 (48.8%) – WINNER
Jason Lewis (Republican): 1,398,145 (43.5%)
Kevin O’Connor (Libertarian): 190,154 (5.9%)

Mississippi:

Cindy Hyde-Smith (Republican): 709,551 votes (54.1%) – WINNER
Mike Epsy (Democrat): 578,691 votes (44.1%)
Jimmy Edwards (Libertarian): 23,152 votes (1.8%)

Montana:

Steve Daines (Republican): 333,174 votes (55%) – WINNER
Steve Bullock (Democrat): 272,463 votes (45%)

Nebraska:

Ben Sasse (Republican): 503,587 votes (67.4%) – WINNER
Chris Janicek (Democrat): 277,191 votes (26.2%)
Gene Siadek (Libertarian): 55,115 votes (6.4%)

New Hampshire:

Jeanne Shaheen (Democrat): 450,780 votes (56.7%) – WINNER
Corky Messner (Republican): 326,229 votes (41%)
Justin O’Donnell (Libertarian): 18,421 votes (2.3%)

New Jersey:

Cory Booker (Democrat): 2,541,178 votes (57.2%) – WINNER
Rikin Mehta (Republican): 1,817,052 votes (40.9%)
Madelyn Hoffman (Libertarian): 38,288 votes (0.9%)

New Mexico:

Ben Ray Lujan (Democrat): 474,483 votes (51.7%) – WINNER
Mark Ronchetti (Republican): 418,483 votes (45.6%)
Bob Walsh (Libertarian): 24,271 votes (2.5%)

North Carolina:

Thom Tillis (Republican): 2,665,598 votes (48.7%) – WINNER
Cal Cunningham (Democrat): 2,569,965 votes (46.9%)
Shannon Bray (Libertarian): 171,571 votes (3.1%)

Oklahoma:

Jim Inhofe (Republican): 979,140 votes (62.9%) – WINNER
Abby Broyles (Democrat): 509,763 votes (32.8%)
Robert Murphy (Libertarian): 34,435 votes (2.2%)

Oregon:

Jeff Merkley (Democrat): 1,321,047 votes (57%) – WINNER
Jo Rae Perkins (Republican): 912,814 votes (39.4%) She is a follower of the QAnon conspiracy theories.
Gary Dye (Libertarian): 42,747 votes (1.8%)