Georgia on track to have a record day of early voting turnout in Senate runoff election

Georgia is on track to set a record for a single day of early voting for a runoff as the state holds its the runoff Senate election between Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.

Many counties began voting early on Monday. Though some counties began voting over the weekend after a lawsuit from the Warnock campaign, the Georgia Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, others began accepting early votes on Monday.

Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the secretary of state of Georgia’s office, announced that as of 12.30 pm on Monday, the state has seen 124,007 voters turn out.

“We hit 124,007 then. This is on a pace for record single early vote day turnout ever.”

Over the weekend, 181,711 voters, or 2.6 per cent of the active voters in Georgia, cast their ballots. Black voters made up the largest share of the vote, as 84,218 cast their ballot compared to 68,883 non-Hispanic white vorers.

Female voters outpaced male voters, with 103,984 women voting over the the weekend as opposed to 77,228 male voters. Voters between the ages of 55 and 60 made up the largest age demographic, as about 22,859 cast their ballots, followed closely by 22,463 voters between the ages of 60 and 65 years old.

But a sizeable amount of young voters also turned out, as 18,021 voters between 18 and 24 made up 9.9 per cent of those who voted this weekend.

The runoff comes as Mr Warnock, who won a runoff in 2021, and Mr Walker, a former running back for the University of Georgia, square off in a runoff election on 6 December. Neither candidate earned a majority of the vote during the general election earlier this months and state law stipulated that if that isn’t the case, a runoff with the two highest vote earners will take place.