Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff will win reelection, CNN projects
By Steve Contorno
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff will win reelection, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, defending a crucial Democratic seat that Republicans once considered a top pick-up opportunity.
Ossoff’s victory in a state President Donald Trump carried two years ago is all but certain to further fuel speculation about the Democrat’s political future. He is the first Democratic senator elected to a second full term in Georgia since 1990.
Meanwhile, the latest setback for Republicans in the Peach State will surely be met with second-guessing within the party. Ossoff defeated Rep. Mike Collins, a deeply conservative Republican who won Trump’s backing in the final days of the GOP primary over Derek Dooley, a former college football coach. Dooley had the support of popular outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp, whose clashes with Trump over the years have divided the GOP.
Collins’ campaign was dogged by a House ethics investigation into its spending and revelations that his son-in-law is a pro-White nationalist and social media influencer who has shared antisemitic material and Nazi imagery online. Ossoff regularly seized on the controversies in campaign ads, in public appearances and in their two head-to-head debates.
Ossoff tied Collins to the rising costs of groceries and gasoline, Trump’s trade war and an increasingly unpopular war with Iran. His stump speeches regularly highlighted the self-dealing and enrichment he said is coming from Trump’s takeover of Washington.
Georgians first elected Ossoff to the Senate in a 2021 runoff, along with fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock, in the chaotic days after Trump narrowly lost the state and pressured local officials there to change the results in his favor. Trump’s loss and the Democratic wins announced Georgia’s arrival as a new battleground in American politics.
Ossoff, still just 39 years old, has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars. He has built a formidable online presence, burnished with slickly framed and sharply edited videos of him criticizing Trump that are released regularly by his team, and he frequently packed event spaces with supporters on the campaign trail.
His electoral success in the deep South, digital savvy and boyish looks have led to suggestions that he could run for president as soon as 2028.
In a Senate debate last month, however, Ossoff vowed to serve a full six-year term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president,” he said. “I’m not running for president.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
