Nearly one month after Election Day, we've finally reached the last election results night of the 2022 midterm cycle as voters in Georgia again cast their votes in the Peach State's U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and Trump-endorsed GOP challenger Herschel Walker.
Tuesday's runoff rematch was triggered after neither Walker nor Warnock received 50 percent or more of the vote on election night, the second consecutive Senate race in Georgia to head to a runoff.
The result from Election Day saw Warnock receive 49.45 percent of the more than 3.9 million votes cast to Walker's 48.49 percent. Now that Georgia's again voting in a runoff election, big-name surrogates from both sides of the aisle have appeared in Georgia in recent weeks. Republican Senators Tim Scott (SC) and John Kennedy (LA) made a final stretch swing through Georgia over the weekend while former President Barack Obama returned to Georgia to campaign for Warnock again.
Notably, President Biden and the gloomy cloud of unpopularity he drags with him were absent from the Peach State, with Biden even getting confused about where he was going — Biden "campaigned" for Warnock by going to...Massachusetts to rally volunteers who were making phone calls in Georgia.
Final polls during the runoff showed a still neck-and-neck race between Walker and Warnock, much like in the run-up to November's general election. Warnock has a slight lead among independent voters, but work to bring Republicans who voted to reelect GOP Governor Brian Kemp has seen success, with some 94 percent of Kemp's supporters saying they're supporting Walker in the runoff, as Townhall reported here.
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For more on how Georgia — and its runoffs — became something of a spectacle, Guy has a tremendous piece on what could happen on Tuesday here, including what the runoff's outcome means not just for the immediate math in the Senate beginning in January but what it means for national congressional politics leading up to the next election cycle.
Tuesday's result could leave the balance of power exactly where it started in 2022 with a 50-50 split, or it could give Democrats a one-seat majority — meaning Vice President Kamala Harris would be making less frequent trips to Capitol Hill to cast tie-breaking votes and potentially limiting the power of more independent-minded Democrats such as Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV).
Stay with Townhall throughout Tuesday evening for live results that will update in the map above, and in the days to come as the balance of power in the U.S. Senate is finally settled and all eyes turn to the Speaker's race in the House and the 2024 presidential race beyond.
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