Georgia runoff election - live: Incumbent Warnock rides ahead of Walker in polls in closely divided state

Republican candidate Herschel Walker has not taken questions from reporters on the trail in nearly two months as the Georgia Senate race sets to conclude in a runoff next week.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Mr Walker’s last conversation with reporters was in early October. It remains unclear if he will gaggle with journalists again on the trail before the race concludes on 6 December. The Independent has reached out to a Walker campaign spokesperson for comment.

Georgia Senate race to end in December runoff

FiveThirtyEight.com’s polling average in the Georgia runoff has Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock ahead of Republican candidate Herschel Walker 50.2 per cent to 48.2 per cent.

However, the polling site notes that Mr Warnock’s lead is not ironclad, because although he has the lead in most of the runoff polls, all of them are within the margin of error.

While there is good news for the incumbent senator, the election remains close and he by no means has it in the bag yet.

As two Black candidates face off in today’s Georgia Senate runoff election, it is worth noting that the very system in which they are now competing was originally intended to dilute the power of the Black vote in the state.

While 10 states use runoffs in primary elections, Georgia and Louisiana are the only two that do so in general elections. Georgia’s system was created in 1964 after the urging of Denmark Groover, who blamed Black voters for a reelection loss and proposed runoffs. Groover later acknowledged the runoff system was intended to suppress Black political representation.

While runoff elections had existed for decades in Southern primaries, Georgia’s enthusiastic adoption of two-round voting came as a way of “ensuring a conservative White candidate won an election,” said Ashton Ellett, a political historian and archivist at the University of Georgia.

“A runoff makes it harder for folks who have less resources to vote. This was before advanced in-person voting or [voting was offered] by mail and when we had many other unfair, iniquitous, undemocratic policies. It wasn’t for a partisan advantage so much as an ideological and cultural one,” Ellett said.

It is ironic that 58 years after the system was put in place, for the first time ever two Black men are competing for a US Senate seat under its rules.

Donald Trump has made a last pitch for Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker as voters head to the polls today. On Monday evening he posted: “To the Great State of Georgia, Get Out and Vote for the WONDERFUL Herschel Walker TOMORROW. Herschel was a fantastic Athlete, and he will be an even greater United States Senator! To all MAGA Voters, that is, people that want to Make America Great Again and Put America First, tomorrow is a big day. Vote for Herschel!”

He followed that post with a reminder this morning: “IMPORTANT: Tomorrow has become TODAY. To the Great State of Georgia, VOTE TODAY FOR HERSCHEL, he will never let you down!”

The twice-impeached, one-term former president lost Georgia in the 2020 election which also saw Walker’s Democratic rival Raphael Warnock elected to the Senate. Mr Warnock is now running for a full six-year term.

Georgia’s outgoing lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan has lashed out at Herschel Walker, calling the scandal-plagued Republican candidate one of the worst in the party’s history.

“I’m a conservative. I’m a conservative because I feel like it’s the best way to govern. I’ve been a Republican a lot longer than a lot of folks,” Mr Duncan said to CBS News.

“I think I’ve got kids probably that could articulate the conservative platform better than some of the candidates that Donald Trump and his group supported all across the country.

“This wasn’t the right brand for Republicanism and I think Herschel Walker will probably go down as one of the worst candidates in our party’s history.”

My colleague Sravasti Dasgupta reports:

‘I think I’ve got kids probably that could articulate the conservative platform better’

In a CNN poll of 1,886 registered voters released on Friday, Raphael Warnock lead Herschel Walker by four percentage points, 52 per cent to 48 per cent. A poll released on Thursday by Emerson College and the Hill also showed Mr Warnock ahead, by two percentage points.

Mr Warnock has held a clear financial advantage, with money pouring in from super PACs and out-of-state supporters.

During the runoff election, outside groups have spent more than $43m on advertisements and other expenses in support of Mr Warnock or in opposition to Mr Walker, according to campaign finance data compiled by OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics. That compares to the $28m spent in support of Walker or opposition to Warnock.

The spending differential is evident to Republican strategist Brian Robinson, who said every time he uses Google or YouTube he sees ads supporting Mr Warnock, while his wife, a staunch Republican, has received mail about abortion rights.

“They have enough to go beyond just turning out their base,” he said of Democrats. “They have enough money to try and persuade people.”

After the general election, president Joe Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings, promised to help Raphael Warnock in any way he could, even if it meant staying away from Georgia.

Bypassing the president, Mr Warnock decided instead to campaign with former president Barack Obama in the days before the runoff election.

For his part, Herschel Walker was endorsed by Donald Trump but avoided campaigning with him until the final day: The pair conducted a conference call on Monday with supporters, according to a Republican National Committee spokesperson.

Mr Walker’s candidacy is the GOP’s last chance to flip a Senate seat this year. Dr Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire, all Trump loyalists, already lost competitive Senate races that Republicans once considered part of their path to a majority.

Mr Walker has differentiated himself from Mr Trump in a notable way. The one-time president has spent two years falsely claiming that his loss in Georgia and nationally was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even his own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the fraud he alleges.

At his lone debate against Mr Warnock in October, Mr Walker was asked whether he’d accept the results even if he lost. He replied with one word: “Yes”.

Raphael Warnock, whose victory in 2021 was in a special election to serve out the remainder of GOP senator Johnny Isakson’s term, sounded a confident note Monday during a packed day of campaigning. He predicted that he had convinced enough voters, including independents and moderate Republicans who supported Brian Kemp, that he deserves a full term.

“They’ve seen that I will work with anybody that helps me to do good work for the people of Georgia,” said the 53-year-old senator. “I think they’re going to get this right. They know this race is about competence and character.”

Herschel Walker campaigned Monday with his wife, Julie, greeting supporters and offering thanks rather than his usual campaign speech and full-throated attacks on the Democratic counterpart.

“I love y’all, and we’re gonna win this election,” he said at a winery in Ellijay, comparing it to championships he won as an athlete. “I love winning championships.”

And, beginning with the closing stretch before the 8 November general election, Mr Warnock added withering takedowns of Mr Walker, using the football star’s rocky past to argue that the political newcomer was “not ready” and “not fit” for high office.

Mr Walker, who used his athletics fame to coast to the GOP nomination, has sought to portray Mr Warnock as a yes-man for president Joe Biden.

The Republican has also sometimes made the attack in especially personal terms, complete with accusing Mr Warnock of having his “back bent” and “being on his knees, begging” at the White House — a searing charge for a Black challenger to level against a Black senator about his relationship with a White president.

Georgia voters are set to decide the final Senate contest in the country, choosing between Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and Republican football legend Herschel Walker after a four-week runoff blitz that has drawn a flood of outside spending to an increasingly personal fight.

This year’s runoff has lower stakes than the two in 2021, when victories by Mr Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff gave Democrats control of the Senate.

The outcome of today’s contest will determine whether Democrats have an outright 51-49 Senate majority or control a 50-50 chamber based on vice president Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.

The runoff brings to a close a bitter fight between Mr Warnock, the state’s first Black senator and the senior minister of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr preached, and Mr Walker, a former University of Georgia football star and political novice who has waged his bid in the mold of former president Donald Trump.

A victory for Mr Warnock would solidify Georgia’s status as a battleground heading into the 2024 presidential election. A win for Mr Walker, however, could be an indication that the Democratic gains in the state might be somewhat limited, especially given that Georgia Republicans swept every other statewide contest last month.

In that election, Mr Warnock led Mr Walker by about 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast but fell shy of a majority, triggering the second round of voting.

About 1.9 million votes already have been cast by mail and during early voting, an advantage for Democrats whose voters more commonly cast ballots this way. Republicans typically fare better on voting done on Election Day, with the margins determining the winner.

Last month, Mr Walker, 60, ran more than 200,000 votes behind the Republican governor Brian Kemp after a campaign dogged by intense scrutiny of his past, meandering campaign speeches and a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions — accusations that Mr Walker has denied.

Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, two Black men pitted against each other in the Georgia midterms, share their experience quite differently, reports the Associated Press.

Mr Warnock doesn’t often use phrases like “the Black church” or “the Black experience,” but infuses those institutions and ideas into his arguments.

The senator sometimes notes that others “like to introduce me and say I’m the first Black senator from Georgia.” He says Georgia voters “did an amazing thing” in 2021 but adds that it’s more about the policy results from a Democratic Senate.

Born in 1969, he calls himself a “son of the civil rights movement.” He talks of Martin Luther King’s desire for “a beloved community,” an inclusive society Mr Warnock says is anchored in the belief that “we all carry a spark of the divine”.

He touts his Senate work to combat maternal mortality, noting the issue is acute among Black women. He campaigns with Black fraternity and sorority alumni. And he tells of his octogenarian mother using her “hands that once picked somebody else’s cotton” to “cast a ballot for her youngest son to be a United States senator.”

Only in America is my story possible

Mr Walker, alternately, is often more direct in identifying himself by race, usually with humor.

“You may have noticed I’m Black,” he tells audiences that are often nearly all-white. But that jovial aside is the precursor to his indictment of a society — and a political rival — he says are consumed by discussions of race and racism.

“My opponent say America ought to apologize for its whiteness,” Mr Walker says in most campaign speeches, a claim based on some of Mr Warnock’s sermons referencing institutional racism.

He invokes King — “a great man” — with a line from his 1963 “I Have a Dream Speech” and accuses Mr Warnock and “trying to divide us” by race.

“He’s in a church where a man talked about the content of your character, not the color of your skin,” Mr Walker told supporters in Canton on 10 November, his first rally of the runoff campaign. In Forsyth County last week, he blasted schools he insisted teach “Critical Race Theory.”

“Don’t let anyone tell you you’re racist,” he said in August at a “Women for Herschel” event, which included Alveda King, the conservative evangelical niece of the slain civil rights leader.

He blasts Mr Warnock as anti-law enforcement, but without any context about police killings of Black citizens. “What I want to do is get behind our men and women in blue,” Mr Walker said in Forsyth.

Mr Walker touts his “minority-owned food services company”. Talking to reporters at one fall campaign stop, he recalled being a freshman at the University of Georgia just a decade after the football program integrated with its first Black scholarship players.

But when telling voters of his athletics and professional successes, he doesn’t allude to race, instead talking in terms of faith. “The Lord blessed me,” he says of each milestone.

It’s a contrast to Warnock’s framing of growing up in public housing in Savannah, choosing Morehouse because of King, and receiving a Pell Grant for tuition assistance. “I’m talking about good public policy,” the senator says.