Dem
51
GOP
49
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) must be sick and tired of campaigning. As he himself has observed, he's been on a Georgia ballot six times in under 2 years. Fortunately for him, there will now be rest for weary, as the Senator won a full term in his own right, defeating Republican Herschel Walker.
There was some scuttlebutt that the results might not be known until later in the week. However, the vote tallies were announced very rapidly, and the race was called for Warnock just a couple of hours after the polls closed. With 95%+ reporting, Warnock is up 2.6 points, 51.3% to 48.7%. In terms of raw totals, the Senator is up by about 90,000 votes. With that kind of gap, declaring a winner was an easy call for the AP and other media outlets. As we've noted multiple times, the last thing that Georgia will count is the mail-in ballots, of which there are expected to be roughly 200,000. There is no chance that a Republican will take three-quarters of the mail-in ballots, which almost invariably skew Democratic. And three-quarters is what Walker would need, so the running back is toast. He conceded defeat a little more than 3 hours after the polls closed.
Much ink has been spilled, and much ink will be spilled, on how lousy a candidate Walker was. And that is certainly true. You almost couldn't design a worse candidate if you tried (well, except for Roy Moore). That said, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) won his runoff in 2021 by a margin of 50.6% to 49.4%, and Warnock won his runoff on that same day 51.0% to 49.0%. Maybe David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler and Walker were all lousy candidates, or maybe we are learning what the fundamentals of Georgia really are these days.
In any event, after being subject to nearly $400 million worth of advertising this cycle, the good people of Georgia will get a blissful respite from Senate campaigns for 4 years. As we noted yesterday, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) is angling for a matchup against Ossoff in 2026, when the former is term-limited and the latter is up for reelection. Kemp is obviously someone who can win statewide, and he has a formidable campaign apparatus. So, if Ossoff vs. Kemp comes to pass, it could be a barnburner. On the other hand, the demographics that have been turning Georgia purple-blue will have had another 4 years to unfold, presumably pushing the state further in the Democrats' direction. In addition, Kemp figures to draw a challenge from the right, whereas Ossoff should have an easy primary. And, of course, incumbent senators win 90% of the time. So, Kemp probably shouldn't start scoping out Washington real estate quite yet.
And we would be remiss if we did not note that the result is another huge poke in the eye for Donald Trump. He spent the day on Tuesday fuming about his legal issues (see below), and explaining that when he said he wanted to get rid of the Constitution, he didn't mean that he wants to get rid of the Constitution. So, he hasn't yet responded to the fact that his handpicked candidate was rejected soundly by Georgia voters. Undoubtedly, he'll have something to say today, once he figures out exactly why this wasn't his fault. (Z)