Voters are heading to the polls today as the race for the 6th congressional district comes to a close. Former Georgia Secretary of State Republican Karen Handel is facing former congressional aide and documentary filmmaker Democrat Jon Ossoff.
Audrey Haynes School is a professor in UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs or SPIA. She says neither candidate is particularly strong.
"Neither one of them are considered to be high quality candidates, you know,” according to Haynes. “Handel has had an elected office and has more experience, but she's also lost a number of important races. And Ossoff has never held public office, and that's a criteria we use for a quality candidate."
Haynes says the district is affluent, educated, and not particularly diverse.
“The median income is somewhere around $70-something thousand dollars which is relatively high. They’re high SES, we call that socio-economic status, in general there are large portions of this district that are suburban, that are very white, but their voting tendencies may be tempered by their higher SES, more educated, a lot of these people have college educations and even doctorates.”
This race has become the most expensive congressional race in the nation’s history.
