Annie Deitz, Campus Carrier managing editor

This Tuesday was Election Day, and in a vote counting process drawn out by changing federal and state policies deriving from the COVID-19 pandemic, results for the next president of the United States are still in question. 

Georgia has proven to be an unexpected battleground state for the presidential nominees. Traditionally considered a state likely to vote for the Republican nominee, as NPR explained on Oct. 10, polling for Georgia in this election has increasingly shown more voters leaning to the left than ever before. 

As of 9 p.m. on Wednesday, neither President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden had been projected to win the presidential race. According to the New York Times, Biden was projected to have a higher number of electoral college votes, with current predictions estimating he has 264 of the 270 votes required to win the presidency. Trump had 214 votes. With the votes counted at the time, Biden beating Trump in the popular vote with totals of 71,917,120 and 68,516, 194 votes respectively. 

As of Wednesday night, national media had yet to project the winner in five states. These states are Alaska, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. 

According to the New York Times, finalized projections from all states regarding the outcome of the presidential election could not come out until the end of the week, and all votes might not be counted for several days afterwards. As COVID-19 social distancing restrictions have led many states to expand access to absentee ballots, which have caused election offices to take longer in processing and counting those ballots who have been mailed in. Further, many states have instated policies to accept ballots until several days after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked on or before Tuesday. Policies differ between states, which has caused results to come in at different times in different areas of the country. 

According to the Associated Press’s election coverage, Georgia has not finalized their results, and major news outlets have yet to predict that either Biden or Trump have won the state. As of Wednesday night, Trump was projected by the Associated Press to currently have 49.9% of the Georgia popular vote, while Biden was projected to have 48.9%. 

Both presidential campaigns have tried to take advantage of the potential to receive Georgia’s electoral college votes in the past week. On Sunday, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Trump held a rally in Rome, at the Richard B. Russell Airport. Earlier in the day, Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris hosted a drive-in rally in Gwinnett County, and on Monday former President Barack Obama participated in campaign events in downtown Atlanta. 

With the enhanced focus on the state of Georgia, Rome citizens saw increased levels of political activism throughout the weekend and into election week. As explained by the Rome News-Tribune, the Trump campaign claimed that an estimated 30,000 people attended his Sunday night rally. 

On the other side, the Floyd County Democrats have been actively hosting rallies and events to encourage Rome community members to register to vote and fill out their ballot, as well as support local, state and federal democratic nominees. On Monday, the party hosted a sign holding event on Broad Street to encourage democrats in the area to vote on Tuesday. 

Floyd County election officials released the results for Rome on Wednesday morning, announcing they had been finalized. According to the Georgia Secretary of State, 70.48% percent of Rome citizens voted for Trump, 28.24% voted for Biden and the remaining voted third party or wrote in candidates. 

Floyd County also is overwhelmingly leaned in favor of Republican Senator David Perdue, the Georgia incumbent, over Jon Ossoff, the democratic challenger. As far as the senatorial special election, Floyd County voters were 38.07% for Republican Kelly Loeffler, 26.98% for Republican Doug Collins and 19.45% for Democrat Raphael Warnock. 

In regards to local elections, Floyd County citizens elected Republican candidate Marjorie Greene to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives for U.S. House District 14. Greene beat out Democrat Charles Deyoung, with the pair receiving 27,723 and 9,214 votes respectively. 

Floyd County election officials released results for elections on state House and Senate seats, Board of Education positions and several other races. The results for these elections are all accessible on the Floyd County 2020 General Election results in the Georgia Secretary of State’s website. 

As states continue to count absentee ballots over the course of the coming days, more concrete results and projections about the myriad of rases yet to be called will be released. Information about all elections, local, state and federal, can be found on the relevant Secretary of State website, and presidential election coverage and projections can be found on most major news sources.