As Georgia politicos pivot to the next election—the Senate runoff on Dec. 6 between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock—they are analyzing what happened a week ago and how it might affect the race.
One glaring fact stares Republicans in the face: Walker drew 203,000 votes fewer than Brian Kemp in getting reelected governor over Stacey Abrams. And it wasn’t just Kemp’s popularity. The other Republicans running statewide for constitutional posts did nearly as well.
The incumbent Democrat Warnock, by comparison, did 132,000 votes better than Abrams, his fellow Democrat.
University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock told The Epoch Times a couple of forces were at play.
“As many as 10 percent of Republicans would not vote for Herschel Walker. Republicans hoped that once push came to shove and [Republicans] had to cast a ballot, partisan loyalty would override their hesitancy in supporting Herschel Walker.
“Because of his treatment of women, his penchant for misrepresenting the truth, and his inadequate preparation to be a senator,” Bullock said. “All the reasons why a Republican would be conflicted about whether he was the best person to represent Georgia.”
Some of those Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Warnock, one reason he drew more votes than Abrams did, Bullock said. Some, who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Warnock or maybe any Democrat, didn’t cast a vote for senator at all.
The Senate race, which was at the top of the ballot, drew about 18,000 votes less than the governor’s race, which was below it, Bullock said. Some voters made a conscious decision to skip it.
Looking ahead, Republicans must acknowledge that whatever help Walker got from Kemp’s coattails last week, he won’t get during the runoff because Kemp won’t be on the ballot, Bullock said. Only the Senate race will be there.
“If you don’t care about this contest, you won’t bother to vote. So Republicans bothered about a conflict between their loyalties and Herschel Walker will resolve that by sitting this one out.”
A wild card that could affect the race would be an announcement before the runoff by Donald Trump that he’s running for president in 2024.
“The Republicans moveable on this are college-educated white voters on the north side of Atlanta,” Bullock said. “A lot of them, 42 percent, did not vote for Trump [in 2020.] They did not want to see him reelected in 2020 and don’t want him in 2024.
“They can’t vote against him in 2022, but they can vote against his candidate [Walker] in 2022. ‘Oh, yeah, that guy, unh unh, I’m not going to do anything to help him.”
Some broader historical patterns favor Walker, Bullock said. Of the 10 general election partisan runoffs in state history, Republicans had won eight, including all before the two Senate runoffs in 2021, where Warnock and Jon Ossoff won as Democrats.
Those two races might be seen as aberrant because so many Republicans stayed home. “And the reason they did is they believed Donald Trump when he said you can’t trust that election system. The Democrats are going to steal it.”
“So perhaps those two Democrats didn’t win, but the Republicans lost. If you set that aside, the Republicans do a better job of getting voters to come back than Democrats do.”
Another fact weighing against Warnock is the fate of incumbents in runoffs, said Bullock, based on his work with thousands of elections. While 70 percent of front-runners win a runoff, only 55 percent of incumbents who wind up in one do.
“The closer the vote in the first round, the narrower the margin, the better the prospects for the runner-up being able to overtake the leader. Warnock has a slight advantage, but Walker is clearly in the game.”
Libertarians voters—more than 81,000 cast ballots for Chase Oliver—are more likely to vote for a Republican than a Democrat in the runoff. But if they didn’t like either major party candidate to begin with, they might choose to sit out the runoff, Bullock said.
Marci McCarthy, chairman of the DeKalb County Republican Party in metro Atlanta, told The Epoch Times turnout will be light, affected by the timing of the race—a week and a half after Thanksgiving.
Early voting, which varies by county, will typically begin on Nov. 26. That’s the Saturday after Black Friday, the heaviest shopping day of the year.
“What is on your mind between Thanksgiving and Christmas?” McCarthy asked. “Are you going to come out on Saturday to go vote, or will you go out to get Christmas gifts?”
She opined that with inflation driving up prices, shoppers would be looking extra hard for bargains, shopping methodically—often in stores rather than online—to get the most value. “Money is tight for a lot of families.”
“It will come down to turnout,” she said. “And there’s voter fatigue on both sides of the aisle.”
McCarthy said Warnock significantly outdrew Abrams because affluent suburban women—doing well in the current economy—split their tickets. They voted with their pocketbooks for Kemp, then switched elsewhere on the ballot “to vote more emotionally,” she said, backing Democrats on the abortion issue.
Abrams only won the fourth most votes for any Democrat, and after Warnock’s 1.94 million, the best was Jen Jordan, Democrat candidate for attorney general, who lost to Republican Chris Carr.
The Jordan campaign, which drew 1.82 million votes, was based heavily on women’s right to choose abortions, McCarthy said.
McCarthy said some of Jordan’s ads talked about her own miscarriages, charging Georgia’s new abortion law would allow the arrest of a woman who had a miscarriage.
“It’s not true,” McCarthy said. “But my neighbors, younger moms, that completely freaked them out.”
