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With just two weeks until the 2022 midterm elections, a new poll shows Herschel Walker ahead of Senator Raphael Warnock.
On Tuesday, a poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group showed Walker leading the incumbent Democrat Warnock by two points, with 49 percent support compared to 47 percent. The poll surveyed 1,076 respondents. Walker, a Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump, is running against Warnock, who won the seat in a runoff in January 2021.
This is one of the few polls in the past few months to give Walker any sort of edge. According to FiveThirtyEight, a database that collects polling results, most have given Warnock varying degrees of a lead, with a few having the candidates in a dead heat.
A few factors raise doubts about the new poll. Trafalgar Group is categorized by FiveThirtyEight as "a partisan pollster for the Republican Party," indicating the potential for bias, though the site still ranks the group quite high relative to other pollsters with an A- grade. Trafalgar notably was among the few pollsters to correctly call the 2016 presidential election for Trump, though it incorrectly called the 2020 race for him as well.
The new poll is listed as having been sponsored by The Daily Wire, the right-wing news site and media company co-founded by outspoken conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. A Trafalgar poll from earlier in the month without any sponsor and a similar number of respondents gave Warnock a two-point lead.
Despite the new poll, FiveThirtyEight still gives Warnock a three-point lead. A margin that slim, however, is still considered a toss-up by many.
Warnock's victory in the runoff, along with Senator Jon Ossoff, helped Democrats win control over a 50-50 Senate. As a state that also went for President Joe Biden by a razor-thin margin, Georgia has received outsized attention from Trump and the rest of the GOP as they seek to regain power in Washington.
A former University of Georgia and pro football star, Walker has been viewed by pundits, within the GOP and otherwise, as a befuddling candidate for Trump to back. His campaign has been plagued by controversy and scandal, with Walker being accused of lying about serving as a police officer and a Daily Beast article claiming that he paid for a woman he was dating to have an abortion in 2009, contrary to his current anti-abortion stance.
Newsweek reached out to the Walker and Warnock campaigns for comment.
About the writer
Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more