Georgia voters chose the Rev. Raphael Warnock to fill the last vacant Senate seat, giving Democrats more leverage in the upper house of Congress.
According to press projections in the United States, Warnock, 53, won re-election by beating Republican Herschel Walker, a former football star backed by Donald Trump.
Raphael Warnock got about 37,000 more votes than Herschel Walker in the first round on November 8. However, the Democrat fell short of a majority, requiring a runoff, this time in a vote without a third candidate.
Controversially profiled, Herschel Walker came under fire in the midterm campaign after taking a strong stand against abortion, despite two women accusing him of funding their miscarriages.
Raphael Warnock, supported by former President Barack Obama, is a pastor at Martin Luther King Jr. and Georgia’s first African-American senator.
This was the fourth campaign in two years for Raphael Warnock, who ran for the first time in 2020 against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler to complete the term of former Sen. Johnny Isakson. That race went to a runoff in January 2021, which the Democrat won.
With the victory of Raphael Warnock, the Democrats obtain 51 seats in the Senate, against 49 for the Republicans.
Control of the Senate did not hinge on this election, as Democrats had already secured a majority through the 50 seats they won in the midterms, which came on top of Vice President Kamala Harris’ runoff vote.
The election of Raphael Warnock also represented a setback for Donald Trump’s recently launched 2024 presidential campaign, as the former head of state openly declared his support for Herschel Walker.
This was the fifth time in four years that Georgians had gone to the polls: four times for the midterm elections and once for the presidential election. This is due to a quirk in state election law that requires winning candidates for state office in a general election to not only get more votes than everyone else, but at least 50% of the votes cast.
Source: TSF
