Uncharacteristically, Trump made the win all about Handel, tweeting late in the evening: "Congratulations to Karen Handel on her big win in Georgia 6th. Fantastic job, we are all very proud of you!" Karen Handel declares victory during an election-night watch party. Credit:AP Yes, locals were electing a representative for Georgia's 6th congressional district but, through a national prism, the race was more about Republicans gaining the confidence to get behind Trump's legislative agenda, and about the Democrats proving they had a strategy to break from repeated drubbings at the polls - and maybe even to win the 24 seats they'll need to pick up to win back control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Trump and Republican congressional leaders will use the win to reassure Republicans who fear an electoral backlash if they support his legislative program, especially the controversial makeover of Obamacare, which is being drafted in secret, ahead of a Senate vote as early as next week. The Democrats were giddy. The election was forced by Trump's appointment of the successful Republican candidate in the 2016 election, Tom Price, as his Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Last year, Price held the district by an absurd 23 per cent margin - but, as election day dawned, Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff had pegged Handel back to a dead heat in opinion polls. Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff lost. Credit:AP But if Atlanta voters are loyal to locals such as Price, they are picky to the point of indifference about Trump; in the 2016 primaries they went with Florida Senator Marco Rubio; and in November's presidential poll, they opted for Trump over Hillary Clinton, but by a margin of just 1 per cent. Despite an upstart performance in a first round of voting in April, Ossoff's work was cut out for him. In an initial field of 18 candidates, he fell just short of the 50 per cent threshold to give him the seat - but that meant that both he and Handel were pitching to the same, mostly Republican crowd who had not supported Handel in the first vote. Ossoff's early appeal electrified the Democrats, who mounted a $US23 million campaign in the belief they had the energy to crash through that Republican advantage.

But the wall of history would always be a hurdle. These were voters who had pulled the lever for Republicans for 40-odd years; when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, they gave the seat to a candidate by the name of Newt Gingrich. And in defeat, Democrats can at least expect to give some Republicans a run for their money in the 2018 midterm elections. But here's the reality; in this year's byelections, earlier in Kansas and Montana; and in Georgia and South Carolina on Tuesday, they lost. That point was driven home in a text sent to The Washington Post by a White House aide, even before the count was over: "They haven't figured out how to beat Trump." In a tweet just short of midnight, Trump rubbed it in.

Handel won despite strong local misgivings over healthcare. A poll for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that just a quarter of likely voters favoured the Republicans' American Health Care Act - the replacement for Obamacare, on which the Senate is expected to vote next week. The count got under way as torrential rain fell through a sticky evening in Atlanta. Ossoff edged ahead in the count of early votes; and, as the first boxes were counted, he had a wafer-thin margin of 1.3 per cent with less than 1 per cent of the vote tallied. That was a good sign, because strategists on both sides had cautioned that the early count would most likely favour Handel. But as the count continued, Ossoff slipped. With 75 per cent of precincts counted, Handel pulled away to a four-point lead and stayed ahead throughout. Ossoff was undone by a persistent Republican drumbeat which, instead of promoting Trump, attacked - successfully branding the Democratic candidate as a puppet of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, and her "San Francisco values." The campaign hit rock bottom when a pro-Handel political action committee, or a PAC as they are known, ran a late advertisement with images of wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise being carried away from the scene of last week's Republican baseball shooting drama near Washington.

Accompanied by the sound of gunfire, the narrator declares: "The unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting Republicans. When will it stop? It won't if Jon Ossoff wins on Tuesday." Both candidates condemned the ad, but local Republican official Brad Carver told reporters: "I think the shooting is going to win this election for us." The reality of American byelections is that that is what they are. Frocked up in the garb of national policies and the Washington bun-fights - think the repeal and replace of Obamacare and the political bete noire of the Russia investigation - they invariably are interpreted as messages on the fate of the parties nationally. Historically, however, they have proved patchy as political weathervanes. Loading But in Atlanta and in Washington, Tuesday night was all about instant gratification; Ossoff's remarkable campaign had failed to deliver on his supporters' chant of "Flip the 6th! Flip the 6th!"

Republicans and the White House celebrated.