Georgia runoff results – live: Warnock’s win cements Democrats 2024 blueprint as women celebrate Walker’s loss

Washington bureau chief Eric Garcia has the latest analysis of the Georgia Senate rate, how the election is delivering high turnout levels.

Follow him at @EricMGarcia on Twitter for more.

The runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker may involve a contest between two Black men, but some commentators argue the election is deeply symbolic about where the Democratic and Republican parties stand on race.

In 2020, Georgia went for Joe Biden, the first time the state sent a Democrat to the White House in three decades.

Due to local dynamics and pervasive voter disenfranchisement, until recently, the state’s majority Black population wasn’t able to elect a Democrat, even though African-Americans are the base of the party.

Perhaps sensing a red state slipping into the purple category, the GOP found a Black candidate in Walker who was both extremely popular in Georgia due to his college and pro football career, and deeply conservative.

It didn’t matter that he often struggled with basic policy questions or was dogged with continous scandals from his personal life.

To commentators like Caroline Randall Williams, the Republican party is knowingly using Walker to reach Black voters, even though the GOP in her view has abandoned the policy choices that would make America more equitable and less unjust on racial lines.

“Walker’s candidacy is a fundamental assault by the Republican Party on the dignity of Black Americans,” she wrote in The Atlantic today. “How dare they so cynically use this buffoon as a shield for their obvious failings to meet the needs and expectations of Black voters? They hold him up and say, ‘See, our voters don’t mind his race. We’re not a racist party. We have Black people on our side too.’”

Here’s more from The Independent about how identity factored into this election.

The Georgia runoff will be remebered for a lot of things – the way it tested Donald Trump’s lasting influence of the GOP, the parade of Herschel Walker scandals – and that should include high turnout.

According to Georgia data, on Friday, the day of early voting, 352,953 people cast their choice, beating the past one-day record by nearly 50,000.

“Georgia is a national leader in voter access and security,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement. “We are having historic levels of turnout and those who want to vote are voting- we believe this level of voter participation is excellent, and we’ll keep working with counties to encourage them to open more Early Voting locations in the future.”

The Senate runoff race between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock was about more than just politics and policy.

The contest hinged in part on what voters thought personally about the two men, and whether they would factor a non-stop train of scandals relating to Mr Walker into their vote.

Two past partners accused Mr Walker, a staunch anti-abortion Republican, of urging them to get the procedure and even paying for it.

Here’s our reporting on what happened, courtesy of Eric Garcia.

Former president Barack Obama tends to take a much more lowkey role in congressional races than people like Donald Trump, who regularly opines on the latest news and annoints his chosen candidates.

Still, Mr Obama headed to Georgia in the final moments of the Senate runoff race to support Raphael Warnock.

In a stirring speech, the former president cast Mr Warnock’s pursuit of the Senate as part of a larger history of fighting for civil rights and Black advancement in America.

“If the men and women who had to endure the sting of discrimination, the smack of billy clubs, weren’t tired, if the folks who had to fight those early fights – those were the tough fights – for union rights and voting rights and gay rights and women’s rights, if they didn’t get tired, you can’t be tired,” he recently told a crowd. “So you gotta go out there and keep working.” “Not only will we reelect Raphael Warnock, not only will we keep Georgia and America on path to better future, but we will be setting an example for a four-year-old right there,” Mr Obama continued.

Here’s a video of Mr Obama’s remarks.

Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia flipped two counties on Tuesday evening that he lost in November as more votes pour in from the state’s runoff election.

In November, Republican nominee Herschel Walker narrowly won Baldwin County by 0.6 of the vote. But as on Tuesday evening, with 95 per cent of all counties reporting, Mr Warnock won it with 1.1 per cent of the vote.

Mr Warnock won Baldwin in his runoff election against Senator Kelly Loeffler on 5 January 2021, but by 4 per cent of the vote.

In addition, in 2021, Mr Warnock won Washington County by three per cent, but lost it in November by 1.4 per cent. But on Tuesday evening, with 95 per cent of the vote reporting, Mr Warnock put it back in his column.

Georgia’s outgoing lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan has lashed out at Herschel Walker, calling the scandal-plagued Republican candidate backed by former president Donald Trump as one of the worst contenders in the party’s history.

Sravasti Dasgupta reports.

The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman has announced that he believes Raphael Warnock will likely win the Georgia Senate runoff race.

Mr Wasserman, the editor for House races, is not an official network and does not make calls for the nonpartial election analysis report. But Mr Wasserman’s “I’ve seen enough” often preclude official calls from major news outlets.

Around 9:34 pm, Mr Wasserman said Mr Warnock had won the Georgia Senate runoff.

“I've seen enough: Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) defeats Herschel Walker (R) in the #GASEN runoff, giving Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate,” he tweeted.

Incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock won re-election in a hard-fought Georgia runoff on Tuesday, expanding his party’s razor-thin majority as he turned back a challenge by Republican former football star Herschel Walker.

The Associated Press and other US outlets have now projected the result of the race in the Democrat’s favour, some three-and-a-half hours after polls officially closed at 7pm in Georgia.

With 94 per cent of the expected vote counted, Edison also projected that Warnock had won reelection.

Exiting Air Force One on Tuesday night, Joe Biden said that Democrats are going to win the Georgia Senate runoff elections just moments before projections confirmed Raphael Warnock’s victory.

“We’re going to win. We’re going to win Georgia,” Mr Biden told reporters.

Mr Warnock has defeated Republican former football star Herschel Walker, news outlets and projections have declared as final votes are still being counted.