Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics doesn’t understand why the media believe the Republicans are favored to win the January 5th runoff Senate elections in Georgia, and I don’t understand it either. I think the races should be considered pure toss-ups.

Trende identifies six reasons to doubt that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are in a clear winning position against their respective opponents, filmmaker Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock. It begins with that fact that the Republicans candidates are garbage. Both are implicated in using early insider knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic to make stock trades while neglecting to warn their constituents about the coming dangers, which have now resulted in a quarter million American deaths. Perdue has only won one political campaign in his life, and he severely underperformed. Loeffler was appointed to her Senate seat and has never run a successful campaign. At least she’s agreed to debate Warnock on December 6th. After Perdue was humiliated in his last debate against Ossoff, he didn’t show up for a scheduled November 1 debate and now refuses to do any more.

The Republicans comfort themselves that their garbage candidates have a big advantage, in that Democrats are traditionally less inclined to vote in runoffs than in general elections, and this is true. But, as Trende points out, the Democratic base is different now than in the past. When Democratic Sen. Wyche Fowler lost a runoff election to Republican Paul Coverdell in 1992, Georgia was not yet a technology hub filled with northern transplants, and when Democrat Jim Martin badly lost a runoff against Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in 2008, the Atlanta suburbs were a source of GOP strength rather than weakness. The Democrats’ urban base remains the same and may be difficult to mobilize, but white low-propensity voters now make up a big chunk of the Republican base, while reliable suburban voters are key to the Democrats’ success. There’s no convincing reason to believe the GOP still has an inherent turnout advantage, and even if they do it is probably less pronounced than in the past.

As Trende notes, in these particular elections, the Democrats benefit from the fact that Ossoff has natural strength in the suburbs and Warnock, who is the pastor at Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, will mobilize the black vote. They complement each other in a way that Loeffler and Perdue do not, particularly after Loeffler abandoned her suburban-focused appeal to fend off a primary challenge from Doug Collins on her right.

Then there is the Trump factor, which can really be broken into two parts. A lot will depend on what Trump does between now and the January 5 elections, and a lot will depend on how the electorate responds when the president is not on the ballot. Before we get into that, though, it’s important to remember that Trump lost Georgia to Joe Biden while Perdue won a plurality against Ossoff and Loeffler and Collins combined got more votes than Warnock and the other Democratic candidates in that contest. Trump may not be much of an asset.

Still, as Byron York points out in the Washington Examiner, the working theory of the GOP is that Trump needs to aggressively campaign for Perdue and Loeffler or they’ll lose. The basic idea is that most Republicans are now taking their cues from the president, and they won’t be nearly as motivated to turn out without him on the ticket. They also have reason to be dispirited about Trump’s loss and are inclined to believe it when he says that the election was rigged against him. If Trump doesn’t make an urgent and sustained case for Perdue and Loeffler, his base may decide not to participate in a vote that may not be winnable because of Democratic cheating.

On the flip side, however, more Democrats express joy about Trump losing than Biden winning, and they too may be less inclined to turn out when the president is not on the ballot. The more Trump takes a personal interest in the two races, the more motivated the Democratic base will be to stick it to him. More importantly, a lot of suburban Georgians voted against Trump but for the Republican Senate candidates. The more they associate Perdue and Loeffler with Trump, the more inclined they’ll be to change their votes in the runoff. Also, the more they realize that Biden’s presidency will be handicapped by a Mitch McConnell-led Senate, the less they may be disposed to want that outcome.

The final wildcard is Trump’s posture as his presidency comes to an end. Will he ever concede? Will he continue to attack Georgia’s Republican governor and Republican Secretary of State? Will his inattention to the COVID-19 outbreak, which is currently surging everywhere, suppress in the in-person (only) vote and further advantage the Democrats’ vote-by-mail advantage?

It seem’s a very unsafe bet to rely on Trump to bring the Georgia Republicans victory.

The most recent poll confirms my suspicion that these contests should be regarded as toss-ups:

In the regular Senate race, Sen. David Perdue (R) and Democrat Jon Ossoff are tied with 49 percent support, with just 2 percent of voters still undecided. And in the special race to fill retired Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat, Democrat Raphael Warnock narrowly beats Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R), 49-48. Just 3 percent of voters are undecided in that race.

Considering the Republicans over-performance against the polls in the November 3 elections, the Democrats should assume they’ll doing three or four points worse than this, probably from differential response rates from the two respective political bases. Still, the runoff turnout model will be quite different, and anyone who thinks they can make a confident prediction about that is overconfident in their own clairvoyance.