Polls across Georgia are closing at 7 p.m. Tuesday for the only remaining Senate midterm race in the country: the state’s contentious runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
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CBS News reports that while Democrats have secured control of the U.S. Senate with 50 seats, “a Warnock win would solidify their majority in committees.” Nicole Killion, writing for CBS News, adds that a Walker victory “would weaken the Democrats’ grip on the upper chamber.”
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According to CBS News, more than 1.8 million voters have already cast their ballots in early voting for Georgia’s critical runoff.
Considering what’s at stake, The Associated Press conducted a survey to “illustrate some of the challenges each candidate faces on Tuesday.”
Per the results of The AP’s survey, some 54 percent of Georgia midterm voters said they considered “party control of the Senate to be the primary factor in their vote in the general election.” However, as The AP’s Jeff Amy and Hannah Fingerhut point out, that’s no longer at stake.
In the general, Amy and Fingerhut add, “many supporters of both candidates were motivated by party control, and they’ll need to be persuaded to vote a second time around when it doesn’t hang in the balance.”
According to The AP, Herschel Walker benefits from Georgia’s “Republican-leaning tendencies, but Kemp didn’t carry Walker when they were both at the top of the ticket four weeks ago.” Amy and Fingerhut add that in fact, “Walker’s vote tallies fell more than 200,000 short of his fellow Republican’s, which might suggest he has a harder time getting Republicans out for him without Kemp on the ballot.”
Raphael Warnock reportedly has more work to do in a state that “resoundingly reelected Kemp over two-time Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams and elected exclusively Republican statewide constitutional officers,” Amy and Fingerhut explain. Read more about what The AP is watching on Election Day.
Here is more on the respective campaigns for Walker and Warnock:
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The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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