The final contest of the 2022 midterm elections will take place on Tuesday as Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican nominee Herschel Walker face off in a runoff election in Georgia.
The two initially faced off in November in the general election, but neither received a majority of the vote. Libertarian Senate candidate Chase Oliver received a slice of the vote.
Georgia stipulates that a candidate must receive a majority of the vote, so Mr Warnock and Mr Walker went to a runoff.
Mr Warnock is seeking a full six-year term in the Senate after he won a special election to finish the term of the late Senator Johnny Isakson, who resigned in 2019 because of health complications.
Mr Warnock’s race against Senator Kelly Loeffler went into a runoff that took place on 5 January 2021 after neither received a majority in the November 2020 election. But Georgia’s new voter bill, which many civil rights advocates worry will suppress votes, means that the runoff race will take place a month after instead of two months.
Polls in Georgia open at 7:00 am and close at 7:00 pm on Tuesday. Voters who are still in line by 7:00 pm will still be allowed to vote.
Results of the race will likely be known earlier than in the 2021 runoff, due largely to the fact that many voters have already cast their ballot. The last day of early voting took place on Friday, as 1.87m voters, about 26.7 per cent of registered voters, cast their ballot in the early voting period.
Many counties that voted for Mr Warnock--such as Fulton, Cobb and DeKalb Counties--have seen high turnout levels.
Georgia also allows for ballots to be processed before Election Day. All of this means that it is likely that the election results will be known much earlier than they were in 2021, when many voters voted by mail for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Democrats already won control of the Senate after they held seats in New Hampshire, Nevada and Arizona and John Fetterman flipped Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat. Republicans held every other seat they were defending.
If Mr Walker, a former running back for the University of Georgia and a Heisman Trophy winner, wins, that would keep the Senate evenly split at 50-50, which it is now. Vice President Kamala Harris often has to break ties.
Mr Warnock’s victory would give Democrats a 51-49 advantage. Notably, they would not able to pass as much legislation as they did in 2021 and 2022, given that Republicans won control of the House of Representatives.
