Dem
51
GOP
49
A Politico analysis of why Herschel Walker lost to Raphael Warnock is interesting. It is based on interviews with insiders. Walker knew that he knew nothing about politics—unless he is so dumb that he didn't know he knew nothing. What he should have done is talk to Donald Trump—or better yet, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA)—about who to hire as a campaign manager and then left the rest to the campaign manager. He should have just shown up at rallies, smiling, holding a football, and reading a few remarks from a printed script. The last thing he should have done is give interviews and get involved in the details of campaigning, something about which he knows nothing.
One huge problem is that Walker and his wife, Julie Blanchard Walker, micromanaged the campaign. They went over the details of every campaign stop ad nauseum. They also wanted to determine where they campaigned, preferring deep blue areas Walker could never win. Walker's wife thought they could win 50% of Black voters. That would be bat guano crazy even if he were running against a white guy, but against a Black preacher who is Martin Luther King's successor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, it is beyond inconceivable. But she was obsessed with the idea and wouldn't let go of it.
Walker also botched some events. He went to a tailgate before a University of Georgia football game but just wandered around aimlessly. The next day he went to a bar where some Green Bay Packers fans were gathered and offered to take photos with them. Only 20 people were interested. He also didn't use his 1-million-follower Twitter account for campaigning.
His memory wasn't very good. Maybe he played too much football years ago and got bumped on the head a few times. For Fox interviews, he was often paired with another Republican senator so someone would remind the viewers to contribute to his campaign. That's even easier than remembering which three cabinet departments you want to abolish.
Walker had nothing planned around Thanksgiving. When early voting opened, for 5 critical days, Walker was nowhere to be seen. He went to a funeral, a birthday party, and Texas for some fundraising. There was constant friction between him and his family on one side and his staff on the other. The staff had no cohesion.
Walker's wife also blundered in other ways. When news broke about the time Walker paid a girlfriend to get an abortion, his team wanted to work on damage control, but she wanted to focus on responding to Warnock's tweet about how Walker's assistant football coach in high school had endorsed Warnock.
On the stump, Walker was a terrible speaker, at one point talking about the respective benefits of being a vampire vs. a werewolf. He was mocked mercilessly for that. Just reading a speech prepared by his speechwriter would have been enough, but he didn't like that. He also wasn't nearly as good as Warnock at raising money. If he had more money, he could have waged an air war instead of a ground war, which he was terrible at. That he managed to get 48.6% of the vote is simply due to that little (R) after his name.
In case you are interested how the election went geographically, here is the map of the runoff by county.
As you can see, most of Warnock's votes came from the six biggest cities in Georgia and their suburbs plus eight heavily Black counties south of Columbus. These counties are part of the Black Belt that runs from North Carolina to Arkansas and Louisiana. The soil there is extremely fertile due to it being an ancient shoreline 66 to 145 million years ago. The rich soil made growing cotton there very profitable, which resulted in the importation of millions of Black slaves from Africa to work in the cotton fields. Their descendants now form majorities in many counties in the Belt, as shown below:
If you want more on how the vote shifted between the general election and the runoff, look here Briefly, turnout was lower than for the general election by about 400,000 votes. However, Warnock's total dropped by 133,000 votes and Walker's total dropped by 191,000 votes. So it appears that more of Walker's supporters stayed home than did Warnock's.
Also, urban areas were 4.0 points more Democratic than in the general election, suburban areas were 2.4 points more Democratic, and rural areas were 0.7 points more Democratic (i.e., less Republican). (V)