Raphael Warnock in the 2020 election campaign.
Photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
One of the reasons the 2020 election was intriguing to political junkies is that it went into overtime. No, I am not referring to the efforts of Donald Trump and his cronies to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory announced on November 7th. The fight for control of the US Senate has rightly been postponed to not one but two seats decided in a runoff in the Georgia general election on January 4, 2021. Were it not for the double victories of Jon Ossoff over David Perdue and Raphael Warnock over Kelly Loeffler, then we would not be discussing passing the party’s Inflation Reduction Act or other Democratic congressional victories.
The Warnock-Loeffler runoff was the result of Georgia’s “jungle primary” rules for special elections; The contest was held to fill the remaining two years of a term won in 2016 by Republican Johnny Isakson, who resigned due to ill health (and was temporarily replaced by Loeffler, who was replaced by Gov. Brian Kemp in a move that fueled his was appointed to the position feud with Trump). But the Ossoff-Perdue race was just a regular old Senate race. Georgia needs majorities for both general election victories and primary elections. If this does not happen, there will be runoff elections in the parliamentary elections. In addition to 2020, it happened in Senate races in 1992 and 2008 and could happen again this year.
Warnock is now fighting Republican Herschel Walker for a full Senate term in one of the races believed to be central in the battle for party control in the upper chamber. The heavily funded incumbent currently leads the challenger by a 47.6 to 43.2 lead in RealClearPolitics poll averages. But that number is very likely to intensify as the pro-Republican wave momentum of a midterm election kicks in. And it’s worth noting that in InsiderAdvantage’s most recent Warnock-Walker poll, Libertarian Chase Oliver got 3 percent of the vote. That sounds about right: In the Ossoff-Perdue race, which went into the 2020 runoff, Libertarian Shane Hazel received 2.4 percent of the vote, more than the 1.8 percent that separated the major party candidates.
2022 won’t be a full repeat of 2020 in Georgia, however, because Kemp and Republican lawmakers pushed back the date of runoffs in the general election from January to December under their infamous 2021 election bill, in an apparent attempt to restrict those early voting opportunities that Democratic voters tend to disproportionately rely on. Based on initial reviews of the two campaigns, Walker may need all the help he can get.
Of course, we won’t know until after November 8 if there will be a runoff in the US Senate in Georgia and if that will matter for party control. There are other states holding Senate elections this year where the results could take some time to sort out, notably Alaska with its new ranking general election system. When the Senate turns in Georgia in December, the state will once again be a boon to political advertisers and unemployed campaign workers, at least for another four weeks.
See everything
Sign up for the Intelligencer newsletter
Daily news about politics, business and technology shaping our world.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
