Warnock wins runoff despite strong local support for Walker

By Shawn Jarrard

Incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock won the Dec. 6 General Election Runoff, beating Republican Herschel Walker by about 95,000 votes statewide. The defeated challenger conceded the race several hours after polls closed.

Starting in 2023, Warnock’s re-election will produce the Senate’s first party majority in two years with a 51-49 split in favor of Democrats.

Roughly 3.5 million Georgians cast ballots in the runoff election, down about 400,000 votes from Nov. 8 General Election participation. The turnout among all active registered voters for the General Election was 57%, whereas just over 50% of voters took part in the runoff.

Warnock won the race with 51.4% of the vote, garnering 2.8% more votes than Walker.

Here in Towns County, the results looked decidedly different. Of the 6,468 ballots cast locally, more than 80% of voters supported Walker over Warnock, showcasing the deep red leanings of the rural North Georgia area.

Towns Countians cast 5,193 votes for Walker versus 1,275 for Warnock, with 62% of the county’s 10,435 active registered voters participating in the Dec. 6 runoff, compared to the 71% local turnout in the General Election.

Like the November election, Towns easily made the Top 10 among the state’s 159 counties for highest voter turnout in the runoff.

In many ways, Georgia has become a purple state, contributing to the likelihood of split-ticket voting, e.g. the electorate simultaneously ushering in Republican state leadership and Democratic federal leadership.

As demonstrated in Towns County, the partisan makeup of Georgia’s increasingly purple political environment seems to be a tale of geography versus population density; the state is redder on a map but bluer in highly populated areas like Atlanta.