Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock won with 50.4% this Tuesday in the second round of elections for the Georgia Senate seat, after an extremely close contest against Republican candidate Herschel Walker, who achieved 49.6% according to projections from our sister network NBC News.
The election result gives Democrats a 51-49 outright majority in the Senate over Republicans, extending by one seat the lead they gained last year when Warnock also won a runoff in Georgia.
The senator, who became the first black man to serve in office in 2021, will now make history as the first black person to win a full six-year term for the Georgia Senate seat.
[Warnock or Walker? Calmly and without long lines to vote: this is how the second round passed in Georgia by the Senate]
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock at a rally on December 6, 2022. Brynn Anderson / AP
In the November 8 midterms, Warnock had 37,000 more votes than Walker out of the nearly four million cast, but fell just short of a majority, forcing a runoff.
About 1.9 million people voted early in the runoff, favoring Warnock.
While this Tuesday more than 1.3 million went to the polls to vote in person, which was a record turnout for a second round, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The two candidates traded the lead in the vote count several times throughout the night, becoming virtually even at points in what was a heart-stopping contest.
There were less than 30,000 votes difference between the two, with 95% of the votes counted.
In Warnock's field headquarters, however, there had been a spirit of triumph ever since.
"We're going to win tonight!" the emcee at the party to wait for the election results said in a musical tone, according to NBC News.
Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker at a campaign event on Dec. 6, 2022. Ben Gray / AP
The campaign turned into a bitter fight between two black men in a major southern state: Warnock, who is also the senior minister of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and Walker, a former college football star. from Georgia and political rookie endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Walker's loss marks another fiasco for a Trump-backed candidate in the midterms and calls into question his ability to lead the Republican Party into 2024 after he announced he plans to run for president.
Although Georgia voters preferred Republican candidates in the other races up for grabs in the state, including gubernatorial (which Brian Kemp won against Democrat Stacey Abrams in the first round), Warnock's victory cements the state as one of the key battlegrounds that could be won by either party in the 2024 presidential elections.
[Trump Organization Convicted of Tax Fraud Scheme by New York Jury]
Scandals have plagued the campaign of Walker, who was accused of paying for abortions for two ex-girlfriends when he promoted himself as an anti-abortion candidate.
He has denied the accusations.
But some believe that the fact that Trump campaigned for him also worked against him.
While the former president appeared in the state in November to ask for a vote in favor of the former soccer star, Trump was conspicuous by his absence in the second round, a sign that Walker's political team considered him more of a liability than a support. .
The loss of the Georgia Senate seat means that Trump-backed candidates in the midterms not only failed to give Republicans a majority in that chamber, but took a seat from them, further complicating their position heading into 2024. .
Voters line up in Atlanta, Georgia, for the Senate runoff on December 6, 2022.Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For Republican voter Tom Callaway, who spoke to The Associated Press news agency, Walker did not have what it took to be a good senator.
"I don't think he said anything that he really believed in or that his campaign made any sense," Callaway said hours before the result was announced.
Duane Cochenour, a 61-year-old attorney who voted for Walker in his downtown Atlanta district, told NBC News he had done so with some reluctance and was "not crazy about him."
“I am not a fan of Donald Trump at all.
I really wish he would go away.
That's my biggest negative in voting for Walker: I didn't want to be perceived as voting for a Trump candidate," Cochenour said, reflecting a frame of mind that has helped Democrats gain ground in Georgia.
"But I felt that the importance of taking back the Senate outweighed that."
