It is midnight on the east coast. Polls have been closed in georgia for five hours and heres where we stand. In the Georgia Senate runoff between incumbent republican senator dave uld perdue and democratic challenger jon ossoff, its 5050. This race is officially too close to call per nbc news. There are very few votes between those two candidates again 50. 0 to 50. 0. This is too close to call although warnock leads. Hes at 50. 4 to loefflers 49. 6 . There are a difference of just over 30,000 votes between those two candidates. Again, the numbers here are astonishing in terms of their closeness. There are remaining votes still due to be reported. Were at 98 in. Were watching closely the counties that remain that remain on our board with votes outstanding. Joy reid, watching what we have seen over these past 5. 5 hours since weve been here, the 5 hours since the polls closed, its been a nailbiter. I have no nails left. I didnt start with very many, but i have no nails left. Obviously Raphael Warnock supportvers to be pleased with their position right now. Neither warnock or ossoff supporters can be happy tied at 5050. The reality of the way american elections work is that the black towns come last. They come in last. You know, africanamericans tend to live in cities, big settees, and in states like georgia they tend to have, you know, sort of the older machines, the sort of theyre not given like the top equipment. Its difficult, right . Every sort of, you know, hurdle is sort of put before africanamerican voters and then you tend to see the votes from cities that are very diverse come in late. So that looks good in an election like this because youre waiting on whats finealy out there, youre waiting on the cities that at least have pluralities of nonwhite people in them. And thats usually good for democrats. The democrats im texting with feel very good about where even ossoff stands. They feel very confident. And ill read you one text from a georgia politico they sent me. If you think about the way warnock versus ossoff are running, the point is warnock is running against an appointed senator says politico whos not distinguished herself in any positive way. I will add also attacked Ebenezer Baptist church and the black church more generally. Perdue is an incumbent whose cousin was governor for 8 years. And black voters are powering the race, and also warnock is a historic figure. If you go through it theres only been three black historic senators from the south. Reynolds and bruce and tim scott. Only three from the south. So warnock represented this opportunity to make history and, you know, Kelly Loeffler is not really a georgian person whereas, you know, perdue is harder to beat, you know . His cousin is the secretary of agriculture to donald trump. And sunny perdue is a very wellknown politician whos a former governor. So perdue is a hard person to beat. I think also it was interesting that perdue and loeffler for all the differences between them including those important ones you were talking about there, they both worked hard with the same brush for these twin runoffs with corruption problems. Both of them very, very wealthy. Both of them fairly credibly and substantively accused having used their pgsz in the senate to make themselves richer, the people who they knew richer. The allegations against perdue in particular essentially Insider Trading using nonpublic information he got access to as a senator to make money for himself in to stock market, while some of them have been litigated and theyve been the subject of ethics complaints and everything, i think those stuck to him. And its a credit to the Ossoff Campaign i think that ossoff was able to get those things to stick to david perdue because they werent new. Those allegations against perdue have been kicking around for a long time now, but ossoff was able to get traction with them. I think through a fairly disciplined campaign. And theres been a lot of criticism we heard a lot of it tonight how negative the campaign ads were and how negative they were by both candidates on both sides. But sticking some of this stuff to perdue who as you say really was republican royalty in georgia was no small feat. When he ran in georgias sixth district which this is new gingrichs old district and he lost lucy mcbath, africanamerican woman now represents that district. He didnt seem as effective as just a candidate. The way that he took perdue apart in that first debate so badly that perdue wouldnt debate him again, like not only would he not debate him again in the election proper, in this runoff he wouldnt debate him at all. There was like an empty chair because he just destroyed the guy in the debate. So hes just become this outstanding debater. And i think the buddy act between warnock and ossoff, they defend each other, they have each others back and they ran as sort of paunch and john maybe im aging myself. You know what im saying. It worked. Warnock is in a better position right now than ossoff is. That may be because of the relative strength of perdue versus loeffler. It may be because of the relative strength of warnock and ossoff and the kind of georgia roots youre talking about. But theres less suspense tonight right now in terms of whats going to happen in the warnock, loeffler race. Theres less suspense in that 5050 race were seeing between ossoff and perdue. I want to bring into the conversation now our colleague Lawrence Odonnell. Lawrence, i have a question for you, lawrence, about whether there is a substantive and meaningful difference in the senate if the senate is divided 4951, a normal split that doesnt require a tie break versus a senate that is 5050 with the Vice President tie breaking. Theres not a functional difference in terms of Committee Assignments or rules or the way that the majority can wield its power. Now, theres no real functional difference. However, rachel, there becomes a huge suspense difference because it becomes possible in this environment if there are say 51 republicans, 49 democrats by the time the dust clears here for anyone one of the republicans to walk across the aisle and say im going to vote for Chuck Schumer for majority leader. And weve seen it happen before. June jeffards did it in 2001, and the reason he left the Republican Party and went over and sided with the democrats seems quaint today in a way thats unbelievable. He was he was objecting to the size the size of the bush tax cuts. Not that they were tax cuts, but they were too big and too irresponsible. And that was the straw that broke his back and made him cross the aisle. And weve seen it once or twice once since then actually that moved the democrats up closer to 60 votes. But thats the interesting suspenseful pressure that could occur if you only get one victory in georgia tonight. But you would look at could could Susan Collins follow in the jim jeffards shoes . Thats probably doubtful. Its hard to see who that person might be on the republican side, but whether the you control the senate with 50 senators plus the Vice President or 51 elected senators, you get all the same powers of the majority. Lets find out from Steve Kornacki if we are any closer to figuring out which of those scenarios it is going to be. Steve, we are still waiting for those same votes to come in, right . Yeah, were trying to get a sense here exactly what is left. And i was just talking to our decision desk. Theyre trying to track down exactly what is left, exactly where it is left, how much is left and what type of vote were talking about here. Were look at a situation where for this race right here david perdue, 1,088 votes statewide for jon ossoff. And the other state here Raphael Warnock 35,132. Hes been running consistently ahead of ossoff. Its more than 35,000 vote difference between those two. What are the major outstanding votes we know of right now the number one is Dekalb County. We think there are about 20,000 votes left to come in Dekalb County. We do not know were trying to find out. We do not know if were going to get those remaining 20,000 votes, some of them, all of them, none of them, we dont know if were going to get that tonight. But the 20,000 votes to come from Dekalb County, we saw this earlier when we got that big batch of votes its going to be overwhelmingly democratic. 79, 81, 83 but overwhelmingly democratic when it comes in. About 20,000 votes there. Ossoff going to get the lion share and warnock is going to get the lion share of them certainly and you can see that alone would move the statewide lead. Fulton county, what are we waiting on in Fulton County . Were trying to get an exact sense what were waiting on. One thing we know weve talked about this a little bit, the mail votes that arrived today, the ones that were dropped off. They have those drop off boxes you can take your ballot on election day, put it in the box. People who did that on election day, that still needs to be processed, tabulated, reported out. Is that something thats going to happen tonight partially, entirely . If it happens tonight we get indications i think its going to be a while on that. How many votes are there . Were not sure. 5,000, 10,000, could it be somewhere in that range, not exactly sure. But thats mail vote in Fulton County that is expected to be heavily democratic vote. Also the saga of Chatham County where savannah is, we have had theyre going to leave 20,000 votes, theyre going to report them all out. Theres still some votes, we think mail votes probably 3,000 call up the results we have from Chatham County. There are about 3,000 mail votes left in Chatham County they are not going to count tonight. So we got a big release from Chatham County earlier. We thought that might be all of the votes. It is almost all of the votes, but you can expect 3,000 more mail ballots. This is savannah area, so again mail ballots, democratic. You can expect democrats to make gains there. So dekalb, fulton and Chatham County, savannah, those are the biggest sources of outstanding vote. Were trying to get the exact counting because there are scatterings in these different republican counties have some outstanding vote. But also what it looks like in these even republican counties where youre looking at outstanding vote right now, looks like youre generally looking at mail vote, early vote mail, not the election day vote. The election day vote is the most overwhelmingly republican in any county youre in. The election day vote is the most overwhelmingly republican to the extent were waiting on a little bit from here, a little bit from there, youre going to be looking at the least republican vote from those counties. Again, were trying to get our decision desk exact counting of which counties there are there, how many votes. Again, these are small numbers. Even if you add them together dekalb is going to be your biggest. Fulton, chatham, scattering provisional ballots. Thats not something were going to get to tonight, but there were 10,000 provisional ballots back in the november election. So, you know, what are they going to be for this election . 7 7,500, 8,000, Something Like that. The provisional ballots breaking about 21 for the democrats back in november. Again, that could be about 8,000 votes where the democrats are netting more than the republicans. So that is our sense right now, and were trying to refine it and im staying in touch with our decision desk here. But we see some significant sources of votes that remain on this map that are probably going to be favorable to democrats. We do not know if those places are going to report out tonight or going to be into tomorrow. So we dont know if were getting more votes, how many more were getting. And again the situation here is jon ossoff is trying to catch david perdue in this count here. And if he does or even if he doesnt, the issue here too if it falls, if the final result falls within half a percent, that could trigger a recount. And this one, warnock and loeffler, this race a bit different dynamic here where warnock up 35,000 votes already, also like ossoff is waiting on some of these places that promised to deliver good votes for democrats here in terms of whats left, warnock with an opportunity to build on that, and potentially we will see his goal right now certainly would be to land in a place where not only is he ahead of loeffler but out of that recount zone when it comes to that count with loeffler. Thats a lot of de25tail, bu it seems youre telling a coherent story here which you talk about the bulk of the vote still to come in. Dekalb county, that vote is going to lean democrat. Chatham county, savannah that vote is going to lean democrat. Provisional ballots ultimately those will likely lean democrat. And other than that there is a smattering of other vote likely to come in, but sort of just dregs, not ballots expected to come in in significant numbers even they do lean republican. That sounds like a very unbalanced future in terms of what the rels of the ballots are going to be . Yeah, the hesitation here is just i dont have an exact accounting of those smaller counties and exactly how many are left, so i would like to get sort of a cumulative total there to see exactly. But i think the expectation here is there arent major sources of outstanding vote here in big red counties. And especially to the extent you have outstanding vote ipthen th red counties, it doesnt look like its same day vote. Thats where you kind of hit the jackpot as a republican. There is one category i should point out there is one other category. Again, this is not one that comes into play tonight. There are military ballots as well, and were trying to get exactly what to expect in terms of the military ballots but there could be about 15,000 or so military ballots. That could also factor in. Not something that would happen tonight. Again, theres almost two different stories here. Look, will the democrats win both races . But given how limited theinable of votes are that are left in this thing, these races are kind of in different positions here. Warnock right now is trying to build a lead. Hes trying to see if he can almost run away from loeffler with the votes were talking about here. 35,000 already ahead. Ossoff is trying to leapfrog perdue and trying to land in a place where hed obviously like to be out of that recount zone, but if he finishes in front and ends up in a recount, he wants to be safely in front where he could survive a recount potentially, but thats where that difference comes in. Were going to take a quick break right now, steve, in part were expecting remarks tonight from Raphael Warnock. As steve said hes ahead and building a lead right now. We are told hell be speaking shortly. Well have that here for you live. Well be right back on the other side of this break. 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And other Money Managers dont understand why. Because our way works great for us but not for your clients. Thats why were a fiduciary, obligated to put clients first. So, what do you provide . Cookie cutter portfolios . Nope. We tailor portfolios to our clients needs. But you do sell investments that earn you high commissions, right . We dont have those. So, whats in it for you . Our fees are structured so we do better when you do better. At Fisher Investments were clearly different. We are back. We have come to no conclusions and have made no calls, but here is the situation. In this race among our two too close to call races warnock leads. You see the difference there. In the other race, the ossoffperdue race, closer difference there. Still, too close to call. Those are the two races were watching. And believe me, we are watching every incremental development. We are happy to be joined at this hour by the veteran democratic strategist and notable introvert james carville. James, welcome. What do you think of what you see tonight . Look, ive got to love anybody with a political iq above Room Temperature that thinks were going to win both of these races. So im very optimistic. I want to impart one thing, where trump went my friend pointed out to me that ossoff ran ever so slightly but better than biden ran, and the turnout was lower than the state average. He came, he spoke, and he lost. He couldnt even help him carry he had Whitfield County but he didnt help him one lick. This guy is a loser and hes done. Hell cause inconvenience, but thats it. Democrats are going to win both of these races and its a great night for the United States. If that indeed is the outcome, and i cant repeat enough times we have reached no such conclusions but this is just two guys talking, what will the lessons be to you . First of all, i think that the attack on warnock, church it backfired. I think when political archeologists unearth this, theyre going to see there was enhanced black turnout in nonmetro atlanta. And i grew up in rural louisiana. I have some idea of the importance that the black church plays in these communities, and i think that backfired on them and that contributed a good bit