Early voting is underway in Georgia ahead of next week’s Senate runoff election between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.
Summary
Early voting is underway in Georgia ahead of next week’s Senate runoff election between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. The final election of 2022 will be held on December 6.
- Georgia law requires a runoff election should neither candidate win a majority of the vote on Election Day. A Walker victory would keep the Senate evenly divided with a 50-50 split, while a Warnock victory would allow Democrats to increase their slim majority to a 51-49 advantage.
- Warnock and Walker raised a combined $73 million between Oct. 20 and Nov. 6 and the two sides have spent nearly $44 million in advertising since Nov. 9.
- Georgia airwaves are being flooded with personal attacks. Both candidates are featuring their opponents’ ex-wives in ads. Walker slammed Warnock for running a squalid apartment complex for needy Georgians, while Warnock attacked Walker for pressuring women to have abortions.
- Popular Gov. Brian Kemp is stumping for Walker ahead of the runoff. Kemp is coming off a resounding reelection victory in November where he defeated Stacey Abrams, and Republicans are hoping his vaunted turnout operation can help Walker upset Warnock in the runoff.
- Turnout will be key in the runoff vote. Democrats won two Senate seats in the Jan. 2021 Georgia Senate runoff after Donald Trump’s rallies falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen depressed Republican turnout in North Georgia by enough to give Democrats control of the Senate.
- The 2021 runoffs defied recent historical precedent in Georgia. Republicans once tended to be favored in runoff elections where turnout dropped precipitously, but that ended in 2021 after a surge in Democratic turnout swept Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff to victory.
- Warnock is hoping for a repeat in 2021, while Walker is hoping to defy historical precedent himself by coming back to win a runoff after trailing in the initial vote.
- Per CNN, the early-voting period began on Saturday in several Georgia counties ahead of Election Day on December 6. Georgia’s runoff rules were changed in 2021 after the 2020 Senate runoffs dragged into January 2021.
- NBC News reported from the early voting precincts, where voters were already lined up to vote in Georgia’s third Senate runoff election in the last two years.
- At least 70,000 people voted on Saturday, the first day of early voting, according to The Washington Post. Sen. Raphael Warnock sued the state to obtain one extra day of early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
- Fox News picked up on a new controversy dogging the Walker campaign head of the runoff vote. Walker apparently received a tax break for permanent residences on his Dallas home, seemingly indicating he’s a Texas resident – and thus ineligible to run for Senate in Georgia.
- MarketWatch covered the increasingly nasty tone of the race. Warnock claimed Walker “majors in lying,” “ain’t serious” and doesn’t understand public policy. Walker in turn portrayed Warnock as a “hypocrite” and a “Scooby-Doo” utterly servile to President Joe Biden.
- Walker called Warnock’s spate of attacks related to Walker’s hometown – a prominent Warnock ad “misleadingly” depicts a Warnock supporter as Walker’s former coach – as an attempt to “mislead people” for votes in an exclusive interview for Breitbart News.
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© Dominic Moore, 2022
