Herschel Walker Could Defeat Raphael Warnock In This Scenario

If conventional wisdom is to be believed in Georgia, the state's incumbent U.S. Senator—Raphael Warnock—is all but certain to emerge victorious against his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, in Tuesday's runoff election.

Walker, a former football star, has endured controversy after controversy. He's faced accusations of infidelity and paying for women's abortions (despite claims to be opposed to abortion), and has faced on-record allegations of domestic violence from former partners.

He's been caught playing high and loose with the truth on numerous occasions—falsely claiming he graduated at the top of his high school class and also claiming to be a member of law enforcement—and has faced questions about his mental health and acumen to serve, both for his admitted past habits of engaging in dangerous activities like Russian roulette and his dissociative personality disorder he claims to have overcome, but some experts have questioned.

But after a brutal campaign season—and numerous GOP losses in competitive states—could Walker still win in Georgia?

After Warnock narrowly edged Walker in a November election dominated by Republicans down the ballot, recent polling now shows Walker lagging well-behind Republicans' performance in the state just several weeks earlier: where Walker finished in second, other GOP candidates—like incumbent Governor Brian Kemp—did well in Georgia, winning each of its statewide races by an average of roughly seven points.

Democrats are also outspending Republicans by a lot, and with the Senate now cleanly in Democratic hands, the urgency for Republicans is also gone, with party acolytes like Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham now urging voters to turn out to avert the majority Democrats need to issue subpoenas, confirm judges, and reject House Republicans' investigations into President Joe Biden's administration more easily.

However, early voting patterns appear to indicate Democrats are turning out in greater numbers, while organizations like Black PAC have worked to amplify Black voter turnout in a state their support has been critical for Democrats' success.

"Herschel Walker lost this race in November," Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of Black PAC, told MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart over the weekend. "If not for this rule that forces this runoff, this would be over and he would have lost. And nothing has changed in the campaign in any substantive way since then."

Georgia, however, is still one of the most competitive states in the nation. And Walker, for all his flaws, still has a chance to win.

Though Walker underperformed Kemp by wide margins in some of the state's Republican strongholds, Warnock defeated Walker by fewer than 40,000 votes in the general election. Meanwhile, the Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, received more than 81,000 votes in that race, outperforming the Libertarians' nominee for governor in what The New York Times' Blake Hounsell called a sign many GOP voters could not stomach their party's nominee for Senate.

In a game of turnout, Walker and the GOP now need to inject a renewed sense of urgency for the Republicans who chose to sit out the last several, closely contested runoff elections in the state: with all things equal, Republicans need fewer than half of Oliver's supporters to vote for Walker to win.

Some believe he could. Ralph Reed, former chair of the Georgia Republican Party, told The Washington Times over the weekend that the party's internal polling suggest up to 15 percent of Kemp voters who supported Warnock in the general could flip their support to Walker in the runoff, while two-thirds of Oliver's supporters appear to be trending toward Walker.

It all comes down to who turns out. A 2021 analysis by Georgia Public Broadcasting found the narrow margins of victory posted by Warnock and fellow Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in their runoff elections that year were the result of stronger Black turnout in metro Atlanta and southwest Georgia as well as a sizable decline in turnout from white rural Republican areas across the northern part of the state.

A lack of enthusiasm is going to be a key obstacle for Republicans to overcome: a recent analysis from CQ/Roll Call recently shifted the Warnock/Walker election from a toss-up to leaning Democratic, citing the lack of impact President Joe Biden's unpopularity appeared to have on Warnock's success in the November elections.

"This is going to be a turnout election," Kemp said in a recent pro-Walker advertisement. "Who is more motivated? Is it them or us?"