Well, maybe the final result of the 2022 midterm elections will be decided today as incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock hopes to fend off a challenge from Republican Herschel Walker. Back on Nov. 8, the race ended with neither candidate reaching 50%, the required threshold in Georgia. As a result, the top two vote-getters head to a runoff election that will be decided today.
If you’re looking for runoff results, check out this Politico page sometime after 7 pm ET when the polls close: Georgia Senate Runoff Results
The chances that Warnock will keep his seat remain quite high as Walker wasn’t able to close the deal in November despite his Republican running mate, Gov. Brian Kemp, easily winning re-election on the top line by several points. Walker simply couldn’t collect any trickle-down votes given his own personal issues that came to light during the brutal campaign.
For what it’s worth, polls give Warnock a lead heading into today of anywhere from two to three points, a margin that would easily cement his re-election victory:
The latest InsiderAdvantage/FOX 5 survey shows U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) with a three percent lead over Republican challenger Herschel Walker heading into the runoff election.
The poll, which was conducted on Dec. 4 with 750 likely voters, had Warnock at 51% to Walker’s 48% and roughly 1% with no opinion/undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 3.6%.
“Walker trails Warnock by three points in our survey, which is within the margin of error. Warnock leads among early votes cast by over sixty percent. That means that turnout on Tuesday will have to be unusually high for Walker to win,” said InsiderAdvantage Chairman Matt Towery. “Warnock and groups supporting him have continued their numerous personal attacks on Walker, which eroded Walker’s support among female voters. The Walker campaign has countered with similar ads concerning Warnock, but they have had limited resources and less support from outside organizations.”
As we’ve reported previously, both candidates are flawed and Warnock should be eminently beatable by a halfway-decent Republican. As it turns out, Herschel Walker is not that Republican in a state that leans quite red but has started turning purplish-blue in the suburbs around Atlanta and other urban centers. With Democrats uniformly energized to vote for Warnock and Republicans sort of tepid in their support for Walker, this one isn’t hard to predict.
Then again, maybe Walker is getting stronger support in the runoff than he did in the general as voters get a sort of “do-over” from the first time around. However, nothing really has changed over the past 30 days that would turn more voters against Warnock and turn on more voters to Walker so the outcome will likely be uneventful.
This all despite Warnock’s refusal to support any abortion restrictions whatsoever even up to the point of birth, a truly extreme position that’s well outside the mainstream of even most pro-choice moderates:
Raphael Warnock opposes ANY limits on abortion.
Vote for Herschel Walker. pic.twitter.com/qMcJp3Prjc
— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) December 5, 2022
Such as it is, Republicans are throwing the kitchen sink into this race but it’s hard to drag a flawed candidate over the line when that candidate has lost the trust of voters.
Results should start coming in shortly after polls close at 7 pm ET and we should get a pretty good idea fairly early as to how things are heading.
