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The rules
The elections desk · the 2026 midterms

The Count

All the outlet's midterm coverage lives here: Senate, House, governors and the race rooms. Every call carries a printed number, months early, and gets graded against the certified result.

Election day
3 Nov 2026
Countdown
 
Senate control
R 82%
Record
53 locked / 0 graded
Senate roomGeorgia · Senate · Class 2 · 3 Nov 2026Toss-up D

The Georgia room

Why this seat

The most exposed incumbent of the cycle. Ossoff won a runoff by a fraction in a state that voted the other way at the top of the ticket in 2024, and the seat sits inside the model's tipping band.

State of the field

Resolved on both sides. Ossoff defends; Mike Collins took the Republican nomination in the 16 June runoff, beating Derek Dooley 55.5–44.5. The desk's ledger holds both nominees under identical headings.

The test

Georgia holds if the Atlanta suburbs turn out at anything close to a presidential rate. It flips if midterm drop-off there outruns the drag on the president's party statewide.

The seat, by the modelSame coefficients as every other seat
Model terms for this seat
2024 certified marginR+2.2
2024 margin × 0.781.7
Midterm drag+5.6
Incumbent+3.0
Expected marginD+6.9
Seat uncertainty (1σ)±5.5

Model call

85%

Democratic hold

The single most exposed incumbent of the cycle: a first-termer who won by a fraction in a state that voted the other way in 2024.

Nothing written on this page feeds that number. The method.

Why the board looks empty

It is not a fault in the page. On 2026-08-04 the desk narrowed the source class to official campaign policy pages only — no government office issues pages, no voting records, no news paraphrase. At that date three of the four campaigns publish no policy content at all, so their cells stand empty and the silence ledger below carries the finding.

The source pass2026-08-04
  • Jon Ossoff

    https://electjon.com

    No issues or platform page. The biography page publishes a list of what the campaign says he has fought to do, which is first-party and is used where it speaks to a heading.

  • Mike Collins

    https://mikecollinsga.com

    Biography, endorsements, events, press and store. The biography names two bills he passed; there is no issues page and no stated forward platform.

Cells matched by the desk against a first-party source read 'Source matched'. They become 'Signed' only when the editor of record countersigns them. Until then the badge says exactly how far the check has got, and no further.

Stated positionsGeorgia · Senate · Class 2
Compare
JONo portrait
DJon Ossoff
Nominee

United States Senator for Georgia since 2021

Democrat

MCNo portrait
RMike Collins
Nominee

United States Representative, Georgia's 10th district

Republican

Cost of living

What would they do about prices, wages and household costs?

Jon Ossoff

Campaign lists capping insulin at $35 a month for seniors and lowering housing prices among the things he has fought to do.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·22/28 words

electjon.com — campaign biography, record list

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Taxes

Whose taxes go up, whose go down, and which provisions do they extend?

Jon Ossoff

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Ossoff campaign site publishes no policy platform; heading not addressed in the record list.

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Health care

Coverage, drug pricing, and the future of the exchanges.

Jon Ossoff

Campaign lists the insulin cap, upgraded care for pregnant women, babies and children, new health facilities statewide, and expanding Medicaid in Georgia.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·22/28 words

electjon.com — campaign biography, record list

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Immigration

Enforcement, the border, and status for people already here.

Jon Ossoff

Campaign lists strengthening border security among the things he has fought to do. No stated position on status for people already here.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·22/28 words

electjon.com — campaign biography, record list

Mike Collins

Biography states he passed the Laken Riley Act, following the murder of a Georgia student, and names it his answer on the issue. No forward platform stated.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·27/28 words

mikecollinsga.com — campaign biography

Energy

Production, permitting, and the clean-energy credits.

Jon Ossoff

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Ossoff campaign site publishes no policy platform; heading not addressed in the record list.

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Abortion

What federal law, if any, should govern access.

Jon Ossoff

Campaign lists defending women's freedom of choice in reproductive health care among the things he has fought to do. No stated federal mechanism.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·23/28 words

electjon.com — campaign biography, record list

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Guns

What restrictions or protections they would vote for.

Jon Ossoff

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Ossoff campaign site publishes no policy platform; heading not addressed in the record list.

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Trade

Tariffs, and who sets them — Congress or the president.

Jon Ossoff

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Ossoff campaign site publishes no policy platform; heading not addressed in the record list.

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Spending and debt

What they would cut, and what they would protect.

Jon Ossoff

Campaign lists protecting Social Security and Medicare, and strengthening Social Security benefits for public servants. No stated position on cuts elsewhere.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·21/28 words

electjon.com — campaign biography, record list

Mike Collins

Biography states a record of eliminating government bureaucracy and identifying inefficiencies. No spending figure, cap or target stated.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·18/28 words

mikecollinsga.com — campaign biography

Elections

Voting rules, certification, and federal election law.

Jon Ossoff

Campaign lists banning members of Congress from trading stocks. No stated position on voting rules, certification or federal election law.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·20/28 words

electjon.com — campaign biography, record list

Mike Collins

No stated position

No source·2026-08-04

Collins campaign site publishes no policy platform; no first-party statement on this heading.

Georgia's industrial corridor

Georgia

The Savannah port, the Hyundai plant and the battery supply chain built around them — what happens to the incentives and the workforce.

Jon Ossoff

Campaign lists attracting thousands of manufacturing jobs to Georgia, helping growers export more, and statewide infrastructure and high-speed internet.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·19/28 words

electjon.com — campaign biography, record list

Mike Collins

Biography states three trucking and logistics businesses built in Georgia and a freight and water-resources subcommittee chairmanship. No corridor policy stated.

Campaign material·2026-08-04·Source matched·21/28 words

mikecollinsga.com — campaign biography

The silence ledger

Headings where a candidate has published nothing the desk could locate. This is a factual observation about the public record on the retrieval date. It is not a criticism, and on most boards it is the most informative panel on the page.

  • Jon Ossoff4 of 11 headingsTaxes · Energy · Guns · Trade
  • Mike Collins8 of 11 headingsCost of living · Taxes · Health care · Energy · Abortion · Guns · Trade · Elections
Symmetry checkAudited on load

Asymmetry is bias with the fingerprints wiped off. So the page counts itself in public.

Jon Ossoff

149 words · 7/11 stated · 11/11 source-matched

Mike Collins

66 words · 3/11 stated · 11/11 source-matched

Spread between the longest and shortest column: 83 words. Every cell is capped at 28. The remaining difference is candidates who have said nothing on a heading, not the desk giving one of them more room.

Symmetry audit passing — every heading filled for every candidate, no cell over budget

Portraits · board class monogram

This board carries no faces. It previously ran painted house renders of each candidate’s official portrait; an audit found the renders were not reliable likenesses of the people they were captioned with, and a caption on the wrong face is the worst failure a comparison board can commit. Until every candidate can be shown from a verified first-party image under identical framing, every slot is a uniform typographic monogram — nobody is pictured, so nobody is pictured better.

4 / 5 · Head and shoulders, eyes on the upper third, shoulders running off the bottom edge · Typographic monogram on a flat field — no photograph, no render, no likeness of any kind

  • Jon OssoffTypographic slot — no likeness published
  • Mike CollinsTypographic slot — no likeness published

Portrait audit passing — one class, one framing, every candidate

How the ledger is built

Same headings, same budget, every candidate

Eleven headings, identical for every column, each cell capped at 28 words. The page audits itself on load and prints the word count of each column at the bottom. Asymmetry is the bias — if one candidate got four sentences on health care and another got one, an argument would have been made without anyone writing one.

Official campaign policy sources only

A cell may rest only on policy the candidate's own campaign publishes. Not the officeholder's taxpayer-funded government issues page — that is government communication, and counting it would let sitting members look detailed while a challenger looked empty. Never a reporter's characterisation, never an interview paraphrase, never an opponent's advertisement.

Silence is reported, not punished

Where a candidate's campaign has not addressed a heading, the cell reads 'No stated position' and the candidate appears in the silence ledger. That is a factual observation about the public record on the retrieval date, and it is not a criticism. On this board it is most of the board.

Three states, and the badge says which

Platforms move, so each cell is dated individually and carries its own check state. 'Source match pending' means nobody here has opened the source. 'Source matched' means the desk read the campaign's own page on the pass date and it carries that wording. 'Signed' means the editor of record has countersigned it as well. The badge never claims the next state up.

Pictures follow the same rules as words

Every candidate carries an identical portrait slot at the same ratio, framing and treatment, and images appear only when a single class of source — official portraits, campaign press kits, or house artwork — covers the whole field. Where one candidate has no compliant image, nobody gets one and the slot stays typographic. The picture audit prints at the foot of the page with the word counts.

No ranking, no scoring, no winner

The Count rates races and grades itself on those ratings. The ledger rates nobody. There is no scorecard here, no closeness measure, no 'both sides agree' summary line. You are given the two records and you do the rest.

If a cell misstates a candidate's position, the desk wants the first-party source that shows it. Corrections are made to the cell, the retrieval date is reset, and the change is logged in the open — never edited silently.

If you want the desk's arithmetic on the candidates

The ledger stays unscored on purpose. The left-right placement lives on its own page, with five printed policy anchors per heading, silence excluded rather than counted as moderation, and no overall number published for a candidate whose campaign has said too little to measure.

The Placement Scale
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