ATLANTA — With the last battle of the 2022 election on the line, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker and their allies made a final, fevered weekend push to voters in smaller towns, bustling cities and quiet neighborhoods around Georgia.
Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner who has focused his campaign on his University of Georgia legacy, took pictures with fans outside Mercedes-Benz Stadium before Saturday’s SEC title game. Warnock headed to Athens the next day to trumpet the victorious Bulldogs and encourage students to vote.
But football was only one phase of the four-week runoff’s final stretch. Warnock campaigned across Atlanta, Augusta and Gainesville. He squeezed in his other day job with a Sunday sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Walker held firm to a far more limited schedule, returning to the campaign trail after days of limited stops with an event in Loganville to plead with the party’s faithful to get their friends, relatives and neighbors to the polls to overcome an apparent Democratic advantage in early voting.
And far from the campaign trail, thousands of canvassers continued painstaking work to personally connect with Georgians. The campaigns and their allies have knocked on millions of doors, and tallied millions more calls and text messages, pleading for votes.
More than 1.8 million voters have already cast ballots, shattering early voting records for a midterm in Georgia. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Sunday that 26% of active Georgia voters have already voted.
The early voting electorate seems to favor Warnock, whose campaign has poured in resources to mobilize likely voters and those that are harder to reach. Early voting in Democratic strongholds far outpace early voting in GOP-leaning areas, and Black voters turned out at high levels.
The Democrat has also been aided by recent errors by Walker, including bizarre statements on the campaign trail about horror movie villains. And victories that sealed a Democratic majority in the Senate deprived Walker of an argument that the runoff race could swing control of the chamber.
But even the most optimistic Warnock allies acknowledge Walker still has a path to victory on Tuesday. Republicans usually outpace Democrats in election day voting and the GOP is banking on high turnout from supporters to oust the incumbent.
Both rivals tried to leverage the popularity of Georgia’s top-ranked football team. While Walker greeted fans outside Mercedes-Benz, TV viewers of the game saw ads touting the late coach Vince Dooley’s endorsement of the Republican and another invoking Walker’s history of violence.
While Democrats have already clinched a majority in the U.S. Senate, the fight for the 51st seat still has high stakes. A Warnock win would allow the party to rip up a power-sharing agreement over committee control and grant the party more wiggle room to pursue legislative priorities.
And at a Midtown Atlanta rally on Saturday, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff mentioned the dual runoffs that he and Warnock swept in January 2021 to flip control of the chamber.
“It all comes down to Tuesday,” said Ossoff. “The whole nation is watching us. But we’ve been here before.”
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