Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has beaten Donald Trump’s MAGA Senate candidate in Georgia, delivering a humiliating blow to the president weeks after taunting the president over his relationship with aide Natalie Harp.
Both NBC and CBS News projected Ossoff to win the state.
The Georgia Senate race was once seen as one of the biggest battlegrounds in the 2026 midterms and potentially the biggest pickup opportunities for Republicans as they looked at ways to grow their majority.
However, when Republicans picked Trump’s close ally Rep. Mike Collins as their nominee, more moderates in the deep purple state rejected giving the GOP another win just two years after Trump won the state by just over two points.
It also firmly slammed the door on Trump’s ongoing election lies about the state, where he repeatedly claimed he won in 2020 and that Ossoff never won.
At the same time, Ossoff ran an extremely disciplined campaign, hammering Trump and his allies as corrupt at rallies, from which the campaign clipped videos that repeatedly went viral.
At one of the rallies, Ossoff also dropped the line about the president’s “travel with Natalie,” which sparked a firestorm of attention on Trump’s close relationship with his aide, Natalie Harp.
Ossoff, 39, has been praised by some Democrats as the “next Obama” as they desperately seek leaders who can excite the party and rally support in the way the former president has.
His ability to win in a battleground like Georgia has also driven the 2028 rumors even as Ossoff has denied he intends to run for president in 2028.
But the Democratic senator also ran in 2026 against a deeply flawed GOP opponent. Collins, who has served in the House since 2023, has repeatedly been hit by damaging reports about how members of his family, campaign staffers, and former congressional aides have been tied to White nationalists and neo-Nazis.
During one of the debates, Ossoff hit Collins with a brutal line, “You hired half the Third Reich to staff your office.”
The Democratic senator also held his Republican opponent’s feet to the fire over Trump’s war in Iran and rising costs for Georgians.
As the clock ticked down on the election, polling in the Senate race showed Ossoff consistently ahead of Collins by about eight points.
Trump continued to back Collins and traveled down to Georgia last month for a rally, while other Republicans began to distance themselves from the MAGA congressman and focus resources elsewhere where they believed Republicans had a better chance of winning.
