Newsman: Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock will win Georgia’s runoff election defeating Republican Herschel Walker Warnock’s win gives Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate gaining a seat from the current 50-50 split with John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania. Republicans having narrowly flipped House control.
Georgia was important as Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—two more conservative-leaning members of the Democratic caucus—were powerful enough to control decision making vote.
The pastor Warnock’s win solidified a cycle in which Democrats defied history by defending every incumbent Senate seat, a first for the party in power since 1934. Raphael Warnock now makes history as Georgia’s first Black senator elected to a full six-year term after going through a gauntlet of four high-profile races in about two years.
“To my mother, who is here tonight, she grew up in the 1950’s in Georgia picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco,” Warnock said Tuesday evening.
“But tonight, she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.”
“After a hard fought campaign, or should I say campaigns, it is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy – the people have spoken,” he told supporters.
“There are no excuses in life,” Herschel Walker said at a watch party Tuesday night. “I’m not going to make any excuses now.”
During his concession speech Walker said running for the Senate was one of the best decisions of his life. He also urged those in attendance to support their elected officials and to “stay together, don’t let anyone separate you.”
“I want you to believe in America and continue to believe in the Constitution and believe in our elected officials,” he said.
In last month’s election, Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast, but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Walker, a football legend who first gained fame at the University of Georgia and later in the NFL in the 1980s, was unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions.
About 1.9 million runoff votes were cast by mail and during early voting, while the state was on track for a robust Election Day, with state officials estimating an additional 1.4 million votes cast – slightly more than in the November midterm and the 2020 election.
Early and mail voting did not reach the same levels as years past, and it was likely the total number of votes cast would be less than the 2021 Senate runoff election..
Elections officials reported few problems processing early votes and tabulating ballots cast Tuesday, but there were some delays. In south Georgia’s Lowndes County, two poll workers were in a car accident on the way to the county elections office with the memory cards from one precinct’s polling machines. A Lowndes official said a member of the local elections board went to the accident site to retrieve the memory cards so tabulations could continue.
