Early voting is in full swing in Georgia as voters return to the polls to determine the last remaining Senate midterm race: the runoff between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
While Democrats have been guaranteed control of the Senate, they have an opportunity to expand their majority after beating expectations in the Nov. 8 election.
Both Warnock and Walker failed to gain more than 50% of the vote in the Georgia general election, prompting a December 6 runoff between just the two candidates.
What is an expiration?
Georgia has a unique electoral system where if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff is held with only the top two candidates. The runoff acts as a political tiebreaker, in which a candidate must win a majority of the votes.
After the November 8 election, Warnock led Walker with more than 30,000 votes, but received only 49.4% of the total vote – Walker received 48.5%. Chase Oliver, the Libertarian candidate, won 2.1% of the vote, triggering the runoff.
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This will effectively be Warnock’s fourth choice in two years. He had previously been elected to the Senate in another runoff election in 2020, but only to serve the remainder of the term of the late Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired due to ill health.
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What’s happening?
In 2020, Georgia proved to be a battleground state that neither Democrats nor Republicans take for granted. In his last runoff, Warnock defeated incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler by just 2 percentage points, 51% to 49%. This runoff seems to be just as close.
Both parties pull out all the stops for the race. The campaign arm of Senate Democrats, the Democratic Senators’ Campaign Committee, announced a $7 million investment in organizing efforts on the ground since the Nov. 8 election.
National Republicans have borrowed the popular political machinery of Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. The Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC with ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is investing $2 million of its own money in the operation, which includes voter work and data analysis.
High-profile campaign surrogates also get involved. Former President Barack Obama will head to Georgia on Thursday to trip for Warnock. Obama was in Georgia in late October and described Walker as “a celebrity who wants to be a politician.”
Kemp recently fought with Walker for the first time this fall. Walker trailed his Republican peers in the Nov. 8 election. Kemp won re-election by 2.1 million votes against Democrat Stacey Abrams, but Walker received just over 1.9 million votes — about 200,000 fewer votes than Kemp.
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Kemp implored voters “not to believe the polls. Don’t believe the political pundits who say that race no longer matters. It is important.”
What’s at stake?
Democrats gained control of the Senate after flipping Pennsylvania’s Senate seat blue and defending key seats in Nevada and Arizona. But if Warnock wins, Democrats would extend their razor-thin Senate lead to an outright 51-49 majority.
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In early 2021, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., had to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with McConnell because the chamber was split equally between 50 members of the Democratic caucus and 50 Republicans. Vice President Kamala Harris and her landmark vote brought the Democrats the majority.
A victory in Georgia would also give Democrats a boost ahead of the 2024 election, when 33 seats are up for re-election and Democrats will defend 23 of them.
“It’s not about this December. It’ll be about November in two years and the future of our country, y’all,” Kemp said, stumbling upon Walker.
