First-term Sen. David Perdue is facing Democrat Jon Ossoff for a Senate seat in Georgia.
Perdue, the former CEO of Reebok as well as the former CEO and chairman of Dollar General, was first elected in 2014 in a Republican wave year.
Ossoff is a business owner and investigative journalist who previously ran for a highly-contested House seat in a special election against Karen Handel. After narrowly losing to Handel in 2017, Ossoff set his sights on the Senate where he won this year's highly-competitive Democratic primary.
In late July of 2020, Perdue's campaign ran a blatantly anti-Semitic ad against Ossoff which enlarged his nose and placed him next to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and insisted the two were trying to "buy Georgia." Perdue and his campaign denied any affiliation with the creation of the ad and insisted that it was created by an outside vendor.
The suburbs of Atlanta have recently begun trending more blue, leading experts to believe that Georgia is become much more at play for Democrats than previously expected. In a recorded call from April with "Women for Trump" obtained by CNN, Perdue noted the state's ongoing political shift.
"Here's the reality: The state of Georgia is in play," said Perdue. "The Democrats have made it that way."
The most recent September survey of 800 likely voters from Fabrizio Ward & Hart Research, a Republican-leaning polling group, shows Ossoff with a 1 percentage point advantage over Perdue. A mid-September forecast by Decision Desk HQ has Perdue with a 56.9% chance of defeating Ossoff.