With 81 percent of the state’s precincts reporting in Tuesday’s runoff election, Mr. Chambliss had 59 percent of the vote, and his Democratic challenger, Jim Martin, had 41 percent. The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that separated the two men in the Nov. 4 election, when neither got the required 50 percent. Many of the Democrats who turned out last month in enthusiastic support of Barack Obama apparently did not show up at the polls on Tuesday.
“For a lot of African-American voters, the real election was last month,” said Merle Black, an expert in Southern politics at Emory University. “The importance of electing the first African-American president in history generated enormous enthusiasm. Everything else was anticlimactic.”
Polling stations across Georgia reported low-to-moderate voter turnout. At the Atlanta Public Library on Ponce de Leon Avenue, where more than 1,600 people voted in the general election, only 400 people had voted by noon. Only 9.2 percent of registered Georgians cast early votes in the runoff, compared with 36 percent in the general election.
Mr. Chambliss, 65, a pro-business conservative, campaigned in the runoff on a platform of limiting Mr. Obama’s ability to pass legislation in a Democratic-controlled Congress, and many voters interviewed Tuesday said the balance of power in the Senate had been an important factor in their choice of a candidate.
“If you can’t have a little back-and-forth arguing between the parties, then the party in power will make mistakes,” said Ron Zukowski, a computer expert in Atlanta who voted for Mr. Chambliss. “This was my chance to say no, and I said no. ”
Democratic voters said they had seen Mr. Martin’s campaign as an opportunity to support President-elect Obama. “I want the Democrats to not have to deal with a filibuster,” said Charles Bedell, a social worker in Atlanta who supported Mr. Martin. “It’s important to me to have a Democratic senator.”
Mr. Chambliss’s victory ends at least for this year the Democratic push to reach the 60-vote milestone, though the party is holding out hope that a victory in the continuing Minnesota recount will give them 59 seats in the Senate.
A lawyer for the former comedian Al Franken, the Democratic candidate in Minnesota, said Tuesday that the campaign’s internal count showed less than 50 votes separating Mr. Franken from Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent, in the nation’s last undecided Senate race. The outcome could remain undecided for weeks.
Even with 58 seats, Senate Democrats would have their largest majority since the late 1970s, putting them in a strong position to advance their agenda on economic recovery, health care, labor organizing and climate change. Democrats say they should be able to peel away a stray Republican or two to overcome procedural obstacles. Nevertheless, Republicans were desperate for Mr. Chambliss to pull out a victory and hold Democrats below that symbolic 60-vote level.
Both sides are already gearing up for 2010, where Republicans will again have more senators up for re-election than Democrats will, providing Democrats with another chance to hit or surpass the 60 mark.
Democrats considered Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, who announced Tuesday that he would not seek re-election, a top target. But they say other Republicans are also vulnerable, including David Vitter of Louisiana, who was caught up in an escort service scandal; Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, where voters last month turned out a Republican incumbent; and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, who won narrowly in 2004.
Republicans have their sights on several Democrats in 2010, including Ken Salazar of Colorado, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Harry Reid of Nevada, the party leader in the Senate.
In the Georgia runoff, both campaigns enjoyed national support from the two parties, which spent about $2 million each and sent some of their biggest names to the state, including, on the Republican side, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani. The Democrats sent former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, and the rapper Ludacris, but Mr. Obama himself only recorded automated telephone calls and radio commercials for Mr. Martin, a former legislator.
Volunteers poured into Mr. Chambliss’s campaign from 42 states. “The second there was a runoff, we had a legal pad full of people calling from all over the country to volunteer,” said Ginger Howard, the campaign’s volunteer coordinator.
Kevin Neff, 16, came to Georgia from his native Delaware to volunteer for Mr. Chambliss because he wanted to limit Democratic influence in Congress. “America is a center-right country,” he said. “We need to have a balance of power.”
With turnout crucial, the Martin and Chambliss campaigns cranked up extensive get-out-the-vote efforts. Democrats enlisted 6,200 people across the country to contact likely Democratic voters in Georgia, said Matt Canter, a spokesman for Mr. Martin. Michelle Grasso, a spokeswoman for Mr. Chambliss, said the Republicans were relying largely on e-mail and telephone messages to remind voters of the election.
But only a fraction of the electorate seemed to respond.
“The difference of a Senate seat one way or another — it’s just not central to voters’ lives,” said Mr. Black of Emory. “It could also be that the extremely negative campaigning by both sides drove down turnout.”
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