One person can change the course of history – Stacey Abrams just did it

The woman behind Joe Biden’s biggest election surprise has forever changed the course of US politics, writes John Rentoul

Stacey Abrams, making history by the power of organisation (REUTERS)

It is a paradox of democracy that the chance of any one person affecting the outcome of an election is small. Elections are rarely decided by a single vote. But sometimes they are decided by small numbers of votes, and sometimes one person can organise others to make a difference. 

Jon Ossoff won the run-off election for Georgia’s junior US Senate seat by just 47,000 votes out of 4.5m cast. Those votes will give the Democrats control of the Senate, because when Georgia’s senators are sworn in, the parties will have 50 senators each – which means votes in the chamber will be decided by the casting vote of Kamala Harris, the vice president. (Strictly, there will be 48 Democratic senators and two independents: Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, who usually vote with the Democrats.)

The casting vote of the vice president is hardly a secure majority. In some votes, individual senators may break ranks and abstain or vote with the other side. But Joe Biden is in a stronger position knowing that he can get his measures through both houses of Congress as long as the Democrats muster a full turnout. 

Winning that second seat in Georgia was not as important as winning the presidential election, but it will make a big difference to how the US is governed for the next four years. 

And it might not have happened if it had not been for Stacey Abrams, who is not currently even an elected politician. She was a representative on Georgia’s state legislature, and leader of the Democrat minority, when in 2014 she co-founded the New Georgia Project to register black, poor and young voters. 

She ran for governor of Georgia in 2018, and lost by a narrow margin (55,000 votes), which galvanised her into stepping up her efforts, countering Republican attempts to make it harder for black people to vote, in a new campaign called Fair Fight Action. 

Georgia’s population has grown, but its active registered electorate has grown faster, from 5.4m in 2016 to 7.2m now. It is hard to quantify the contribution of Abrams’ campaigns, but easy to see that she probably made the difference between the Democrats controlling not just the White House and the House of Representatives, but the Senate as well. 

Although she was shortlisted, she didn’t get to be Biden’s running mate this time – in which case it would have been she who wielded that casting vote – but she has predicted she will be president by 2040. I wouldn’t rule her out. 

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator