Senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, are still neck and neck with less than half the vote. They will go to a runoff if neither gains 50 percent.
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By Derrick Bryson Taylor
- Nov. 9, 2022, 11:20 a.m. ET
ImageRepublican candidate Herschel Walker in Atlanta.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesImageSenator Raphael Warnock addresses the crowd at his Election Night watch party Tuesday.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times
The closely watched Senate race in Georgia might culminate in a runoff election on Dec. 6 if no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, setting the stage for several more weeks of campaigning in a race that could determine control of the upper chamber.
Here’s where things stand as of Wednesday morning: Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat, and Herschel Walker, a pro-Trump Republican and former football star, were running neck-and-neck with most of the ballots counted, but each had slightly less than 50 percent of the vote. A Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, had about 2 percent of the vote.
Georgia state law says that no candidate can be elected to public office without an absolute majority, and that if no one gets more than half of the ballots, a runoff should be held between the two top vote-getters.
Depending on the outcome of other races the runoff in December could determine which party controls the Senate. That would be a repeat of the 2020 election, when Mr. Warnock and another Democrat, Jon Ossoff, prevailed over Republicans in separate runoff elections to give their party a razor-thin Senate majority.
Mr. Warnock’s victory made him the first Black senator from Georgia and the first Black Democrat in the Senate from the South. His opponent, Mr. Walker, who is also Black, ran a campaign marred by allegations of domestic violence and assertions that he, an abortion opponent, had paid for a former girlfriend to have an abortion.
Mr. Warnock signaled early Wednesday that he was preparing for a possible runoff, telling his supporters on Twitter: “Whether we need to work all night, through tomorrow, or for four more weeks, we will do what we need to and bring this home.”
Source: nytimes.com
