The US Senate race in Georgia will be settled in a runoff election next month after neither Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, nor Herschel Walker, his Republican challenger, failed to win a majority of the vote in one of the highest-profile contests in the country.
“While county officials are still doing the detailed work on counting the votes, we feel it is safe to say there will be a runoff for the US Senate here in Georgia slated for December 6,” Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office tweeted early Wednesday.
With about 98% of the expected vote in, Warnock led Walker by 0.9% (49.4% to 48.5%), a difference of around 35,000 raw votes. Libertarian Chase Oliver was playing spoiler with 2.1% of the vote and slightly more than 81,000 ballots cast.
Oliver, as the third-ranking candidate, will not be able to take part in the runoff, which will determine the final makeup of the US Senate — and possibly decide the balance of power depending on results in Arizona and Nevada.
Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner for the University of Georgia Bulldogs, trailed Warnock by nearly six percentage points in early October but began to rebound in the middle of the month despite accusations from two former girlfriends that he pressured them to have abortions.
Walker, who has spoken publicly about his opposition to the procedure, denied the accusations.
By Oct. 27, Walker had pulled even with Warnock in the polls and eventually built a two-percentage-point advantage on Nov. 3, statistically deadlocking the race that could determine which party controls the Senate.
Even as Warnock’s camp used the accusations to attack Walker’s fitness to be a senator, national Republicans began trekking to the Peach State to rally with the former football star or take to the airwaves to boost his campaign.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) emerged as one of Walker’s staunchest champions and dismissed the abortion scandal as a political attack, likening the accusations to those leveled at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearings in 2018.
“We’ve seen this movie before, and we’re not going to put up with it,” Graham told Walker’s supporters in Georgia at the end of October.
Along with Graham, Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Tom Cotton of Arkansas appeared with Walker at rallies, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by Scott, began to pour millions of dollars into the race.
High-profile republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, appeared with Walker during campaign rallies. AP/Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionMeanwhile, Warnock’s campaign was boosted by former President Barack Obama, who questioned Walker’s fitness for office at a late-October Atlanta rally.
“Let’s say you’re at the airport and you see Mr. Walker and you say, ‘Hey, there’s Herschel Walker. Heisman winner. Let’s have him fly the plane.’ You probably wouldn’t say that. You would want to know, does he know how to fly an airplane?” Obama asked.
Walker struck back a few days later.
“I wouldn’t let him fly the plane either. But I can promise you, if they see me and Barack Obama standing there, they’d probably pick me to fly the plane,” he said.
Warnock defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a special runoff election on Jan. 5, 2021, becoming the first black senator from Georgia.
His win, coupled with Democrat Jon Ossoff’s victory over GOP Sen. David Perdue the same day, gave Democrats control of the Senate, along with the House of Representatives and the White House.
Walker launched his campaign against Warnock in August 2021 after being encouraged by former President Donald Trump to enter the race.
The next month Trump gave his “complete and total endorsement” to Walker.
Despite the Republican star power on his side, Walker ran about five percentage points behind Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who earned Trump’s undying enmity when he refused to say the 45th president lost the Peach State in 2020 due to voter fraud.
