Warnock gains early voting edge as both candidates barnstorm Georgia in final day before Senate runoff
Warnock is hoping to expand Democrats' 50-seat majority and secure a full six-year term. But first he'll need to defeat GOP rival Herschel Walker in a highly competitive race.
ATLANTA — Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has built up an advantage in Georgia’s record-breaking early vote, putting Republican Herschel Walker in a position where he’ll need to deliver big on Election Day to win in Tuesday’s Senate runoff.
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“Seeing what Herschel Walker has said and the approach that he takes with his campaigning — to me, it just seems like a very obvious choice,” said [Ana] Gomez [Georgia Tech sophomore], who said she plans to vote for Warnock on Tuesday.
Warnock is entering the runoff from a position of strength. He leads among likely voters by 4 percentage points in a CNN poll published Friday, and by 5 points in a UMass Lowell poll out Monday.
[Warnock has gained about a point a day in the recent polls, a staggering creep.]
An early vote that topped 1.85 million showed other positive signs for Warnock, with Democrats enjoying a 13-point edge — larger than the party’s 8-point lead in November’s early vote, according to TargetSmart’s model.But Walker is widely expected to win more of the votes cast on Election Day. The question is whether he’ll win it by a wide enough margin to overcome his deficit heading into Tuesday.
[That expectation is not wide enough to encompass me.]
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But [Robert] Trim [Cobb County Republican] conceded he’s pessimistic about Walker’s chances, comparing his run to former Republican Sen. David Perdue's failed runoff bid in 2020, when he lost to Ossoff.
“I don’t feel very confident,” Trim said in an interview. “I never have felt confident in where he’s positioned. So I’m probably less confident now than I was before.”
He said Democrats clinching Senate control “probably does sap some energy” because “most voters don’t understand” why an extra seat for the GOP minority changes the dynamics in Washington.
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Walker “needs to win Election Day by double digits,” said Cody Hall, an adviser to Kemp, who said the Republican candidate will have to outperform his advantage from November's Election Day. “He’s gonna need to do better than that margin, which his team realizes.”
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But [Robert] Trim [Cobb County Republican] conceded he’s pessimistic about Walker’s chances, comparing his run to former Republican Sen. David Perdue's failed runoff bid in 2020, when he lost to Ossoff.
“I don’t feel very confident,” Trim said in an interview. “I never have felt confident in where he’s positioned. So I’m probably less confident now than I was before.”
He said Democrats clinching Senate control “probably does sap some energy” because “most voters don’t understand” why an extra seat for the GOP minority changes the dynamics in Washington.
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Walker “needs to win Election Day by double digits,” said Cody Hall, an adviser to Kemp, who said the Republican candidate will have to outperform his advantage from November's Election Day. “He’s gonna need to do better than that margin, which his team realizes.”
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]On the campaign trail, Walker has leaned into cultural conservatism, blasting “wokeness” in Washington, the teaching of “critical race theory,” objecting to transgender athletes and inveighing against pronoun use in the military.
“Why are they bringing pronouns in our military? Pronouns? What the heck is a pronoun?” Walker told a crowd Sunday in Loganville. “I’m sick and tired of that pronoun stuff. Aren’t y’all sick and tired of that pronoun stuff? So why don’t we call this senator former senator? That’s his pronoun.”
Warnock…has portrayed Walker as “woefully unfit” for the job, telling Georgians that he “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
