The day before the Georgia Senate runoff election, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is seen as having the advantage of Republican nominee Herschel Walker, but the race is expected to be tight. Warnock responded by sprinting through a final weekend of hard campaigning, making six campaign stops and delivering a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the historic Black church where he is senior pastor. Walker, on the other hand, appeared at just two events, one a tailgate for a University of Georgia football game at which he literally just appeared—he didn’t speak.
A CNN poll late last week showed Warnock up narrowly, 52% to 48%, while early voting has appeared to favor Warnock (with the significant caveat that Republicans have been focused more on Election Day voting).
Compared with the 2021 runoff, Warnock improved his performance in urban counties, while Walker outpaced former Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s 2021 performance in rural counties, The Washington Post reported of last month’s general election. But turnout among some key groups was down: “Asian American turnout was down by about 23 percent in comparison with the 2021 runoff, and Hispanic and Black turnout dropped by 19 percent and 14 percent, respectively, according to a Washington Post analysis.” White turnout also fell, but by just 7%.
”If Asian voters had voted in the same numbers that we did in 2020, we wouldn’t even be in a runoff,” state Sen. Michelle Au told the Post. Warnock has responded by campaigning hard for Asian votes, with ads in Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Korean. Saturday night, the AAPI Victory Fund held a get out the vote rally for Warnock featuring K-pop star Eric Nam, actor Daniel Dae Kim, author Min Jin Lee, and TV host Jeannie Mai Jenkins.
Although Walker didn’t campaign hard over the final weekend of the race, his stream of gaffes and miscues has continued right up to the end. In a Saturday interview with Politico, he seemed not to understand the stakes of his race, or even what office he’s running for. His voters are no less motivated “because they know right now that the House will be even so they don’t want to understand what is happening right now,” he said. “You get the House, you get the committees. You get all the committees even, they just stall things within there. So if we keep a check on Joe Biden, we just going to keep a check on him.”
Walker is running for Senate, not House, and Democrats will have a majority in the Senate either way, though he was correct that if he wins, Senate committees will be even, allowing Republicans to stall more.
There was also this video that emerged:
The man has a pack of secret children but when he couldn’t get his adult son to go to a children’s show with him, he “rented” a neighbor’s child rather than establish a relationship with his own kids? This kind of stuff is one reason Walker ran so far behind Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in November—even some Republican voters are turned off by the quality of the candidate. Republicans “can’t expect us to vote for garbage candidates,” one such voter told the Post of his vote for Warnock.
It’s a race to the finish line now, and the fact that Warnock looks to have the edge cannot, must not, be a reason for Democratic complacency. “We had an incredible early vote period. But don’t spike the football before you get to the end zone,” Warnock said at one event over the weekend.
You can still help Sen. Raphael Warnock win reelection. Here's a list of actions you can take to keep Warnock in the Senate and boost the Democratic majority.
Why did Democrats do so surprisingly well in the midterms? It turns out they ran really good campaigns, as strategist Josh Wolf tells us on this week's episode of The Downballot. That means they defined their opponents aggressively, spent efficiently, and stayed the course despite endless second-guessing in the press. Wolf gives us an inside picture of how exactly these factors played out in the Arizona governor's race, one of the most important Democratic wins of the year. He also shines a light on an unsexy but crucial aspect of every campaign: how to manage a multi-million budget for an enterprise designed to spend down to zero by Election Day.
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A CNN poll late last week showed Warnock up narrowly, 52% to 48%, while early voting has appeared to favor Warnock (with the significant caveat that Republicans have been focused more on Election Day voting).
Compared with the 2021 runoff, Warnock improved his performance in urban counties, while Walker outpaced former Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s 2021 performance in rural counties, The Washington Post reported of last month’s general election. But turnout among some key groups was down: “Asian American turnout was down by about 23 percent in comparison with the 2021 runoff, and Hispanic and Black turnout dropped by 19 percent and 14 percent, respectively, according to a Washington Post analysis.” White turnout also fell, but by just 7%.
”If Asian voters had voted in the same numbers that we did in 2020, we wouldn’t even be in a runoff,” state Sen. Michelle Au told the Post. Warnock has responded by campaigning hard for Asian votes, with ads in Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Korean. Saturday night, the AAPI Victory Fund held a get out the vote rally for Warnock featuring K-pop star Eric Nam, actor Daniel Dae Kim, author Min Jin Lee, and TV host Jeannie Mai Jenkins.
Although Walker didn’t campaign hard over the final weekend of the race, his stream of gaffes and miscues has continued right up to the end. In a Saturday interview with Politico, he seemed not to understand the stakes of his race, or even what office he’s running for. His voters are no less motivated “because they know right now that the House will be even so they don’t want to understand what is happening right now,” he said. “You get the House, you get the committees. You get all the committees even, they just stall things within there. So if we keep a check on Joe Biden, we just going to keep a check on him.”
Walker is running for Senate, not House, and Democrats will have a majority in the Senate either way, though he was correct that if he wins, Senate committees will be even, allowing Republicans to stall more.
There was also this video that emerged:
The man has a pack of secret children but when he couldn’t get his adult son to go to a children’s show with him, he “rented” a neighbor’s child rather than establish a relationship with his own kids? This kind of stuff is one reason Walker ran so far behind Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in November—even some Republican voters are turned off by the quality of the candidate. Republicans “can’t expect us to vote for garbage candidates,” one such voter told the Post of his vote for Warnock.
It’s a race to the finish line now, and the fact that Warnock looks to have the edge cannot, must not, be a reason for Democratic complacency. “We had an incredible early vote period. But don’t spike the football before you get to the end zone,” Warnock said at one event over the weekend.
You can still help Sen. Raphael Warnock win reelection. Here's a list of actions you can take to keep Warnock in the Senate and boost the Democratic majority.
Why did Democrats do so surprisingly well in the midterms? It turns out they ran really good campaigns, as strategist Josh Wolf tells us on this week's episode of The Downballot. That means they defined their opponents aggressively, spent efficiently, and stayed the course despite endless second-guessing in the press. Wolf gives us an inside picture of how exactly these factors played out in the Arizona governor's race, one of the most important Democratic wins of the year. He also shines a light on an unsexy but crucial aspect of every campaign: how to manage a multi-million budget for an enterprise designed to spend down to zero by Election Day.
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