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      Georgia Senate Race Tops Political Spending in 2022

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      In the heady world of campaign finance, there’s everywhere else, and then there’s Georgia.While political spending in America seems to scale astonishing new heights every two years, these days no place in the nation can rival the Peach State, where an astonishing $1.4 billion has been spent on just four races since the beginning of 2020, according to a New York Times analysis.Two years ago, more than $406 million was spent by both sides during Raphael Warnock’s successful first run for Senate. Not to be outdone, Jon Ossoff and his Republican opponent were aided by $514 million in spending to support their candidacies, a sum that shattered the record for a Senate contest.This year, Gov. Brian Kemp and his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, along with outside groups backing them, raised upward of $250 million. And so far, data from the nonprofit group OpenSecrets shows that nearly $401 million has been spent on the race between Mr. Warnock and his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, which will be decided in a runoff election on Tuesday.“There’s never been anything like it,” said Bob Houghton, the president of the Georgia Association of Broadcasters, a trade group that represents the TV and radio stations that are, arguably, the real winners in these races. “It just keeps coming.”The torrent of cash is a product of two main factors.Georgia is one of just two states that hold general-election runoffs, which unfold when neither candidate attains at least 50 percent of the vote. These runoff contests essentially amount to second campaigns, with fresh rounds of advertising to buy, get-out-the-vote efforts to pay for, and direct-mail fliers to send.Over the four weeks leading up to Tuesday’s runoff, nearly $81 million had been spent on advertising to support Mr. Warnock or Mr. Walker, according to data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. That promotional blitz exceeded — by more than $25 million — the total amount spent in this year’s Senate race in Washington, which itself set a record for the state.The other factor is how Georgia, long considered a Republican stronghold, has slid into purple territory over the past few election cycles. The newfound parity between the parties in the state has drawn significant attention from donors around the country who see Georgia as being in play.“Because Georgia is now a battleground state, Democrats think they have a shot at it,” said Joseph Watson Jr., a professor of public affairs communications at the University of Georgia. “As a result, these local races have become nationalized.”Campaign finance data supports that notion. More than 80 percent of the $53.7 million raised by One Georgia, an independent leadership committee backing Ms. Abrams’s unsuccessful run for governor, came from outside the state, as did almost exactly half of the $38.4 million hauled in by Mr. Kemp’s leadership committee, Georgia First. Mr. Kemp won the race by more than seven percentage points.Those factors are particularly amplified when control of the Senate is at stake, which was the case for both Senate elections in Georgia in early 2021, a time when the runoff period was twice as long as it is this year. That helps explain the eye-popping $507 million in advertising spent during the eight-week runoff contests in Georgia that year, according to AdImpact data.This year, the second-most-expensive race was Pennsylvania’s Senate contest, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Mehmet Oz and their allies spent a combined $313 million. Overall spending in competitive, statewide races in Pennsylvania — including the race for governor — totaled more than $381 million. In Georgia, the amount spent on the races for Senate and governor added up to at least $508 million.All of that money is a boon to advertising firms and TV stations. Hilton Howell, the chairman of Gray Television, which owns stations in all but one market in Georgia, called it a “tremendous amount of spending” and “a nice Christmas present under the tree for our shareholders.” A single ABC affiliate in Atlanta, owned by a different company, has booked $86 million in political advertisements so far this year, more than any local station in America.But some experts question the utility of so much advertising when it comes to actually winning the hearts — and votes — of the citizenry.Erika Franklin Fowler, a professor of government at Wesleyan University and a director of the Wesleyan Media Project, a group that studies political advertising, said the impact of spending on races diminishes as more money and advertising flood into a state or media market.“Because control of the chamber is at stake, or the added cushion, at least, I think that certainly is what is driving these numbers,” she said. “Campaigns and parties care about winning and less about efficiency, shall we say.” More

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      Runoff Election Winner Will Become Georgia’s First Full-Term Black Senator

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      Senator Raphael Warnock already made history in 2021 when he became Georgia’s first Black senator, winning a runoff to secure a partial term. But whoever wins this year’s runoff will earn another distinction: the first Black senator to win a full six-year term in Georgia.The achievement is within reach of both Mr. Warnock and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker. But that’s about where their similarities end.Mr. Warnock is a sitting senator and a pastor, while Mr. Walker is a former football star and political neophyte. They have drastically different beliefs, public speaking styles and personalities. In the days leading up to the runoff, Mr. Walker held a series of modest events while Mr. Warnock held rallies and urged hundreds of congregants to vote during his sermon on Sunday.The race increasingly became an exercise in damage control for Mr. Walker. Unearthed details of his private life coupled with misrepresentations and exaggerations about his education, charitable giving, business and work in law enforcement have affected his campaign.But the polls still show a close race — not surprising, considering fewer than 40,000 votes separated the two men on Election Day last month. As each camp has sought the edge, the contest has become the second-most expensive Senate race in American history.After Mr. Warnock defeated Senator Kelly Loeffler in 2021, he became just the 11th Black U.S. senator in history. Mr. Walker, should he emerge victorious, would be the 12th. More

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      5 Key Factors That Will Decide the Georgia Senate Runoff

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      Georgians on Tuesday will decide whether Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, or Herschel Walker, the retired football star nominated by Republicans, will represent them in the Senate next year.The coda to the midterm elections comes after an intense, monthlong runoff contest in which Democrats spent nearly twice as much as the G.O.P.But money will only get you so far in politics. Here are five key factors that will help decide the winner.Republicans’ Election Day turnoutThe early vote has clearly favored Mr. Warnock. Georgia does not track the party affiliation of early voters, but Black voters, who exit polls showed overwhelmingly favored Mr. Warnock on Nov. 8, are about a third of the early-vote total in the runoff, according to the secretary of state’s office, a greater share than in past Georgia runoff elections. Women, who also sided with Mr. Warnock last month, have cast about 56 percent of the ballots. And Gen Z voters — 18- to 24-year-olds, who break liberal — have come on strong.Democratic modelers believe that Mr. Warnock goes into Election Day with about an eight-percentage-point lead. If so, they say, Republicans would have to turn out in force and capture about 60 percent of the votes cast on Tuesday for Mr. Walker to pull out a victory.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffHow Walker Could Win: Despite the steady stream of tough headlines for Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, he could prevail. Here’s how.Warnock’s Record: An electric car plant outside Savannah could be the central achievement for Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent. But Republicans aren’t giving him credit.Mixed Emotions: The contest might have been a showcase of Black political power in the Deep South. But many Black voters say Mr. Walker’s turbulent campaign has marred the moment.Insulin Prices: The issue is nowhere near as contentious as just about everything else raised in the race. But in a state with a high diabetes rate, it has proved a resonant topic.The weatherMore bad news for Mr. Walker: The forecast is for rain on Tuesday, especially in heavily Republican North Georgia.A highly motivated electorate would not let a cold, muddy day keep them from the polls, but Georgians are showing signs of fatigue. There was the brutal primary season in the spring that pitted Donald J. Trump’s wing of the Republican Party against Georgia Republicans who stood by their governor, Brian Kemp, in the face of Mr. Trump’s aspersions. Autumn brought a hard-fought general election for governor and for the Senate, and now a runoff has saturated the airwaves with attack ads.A day of heavy December rain could make voting on Tuesday feel even more like a slog.Senator Raphael Warnock, center, at a barbershop in Atlanta on Monday, with the musicians Killer Mike and D-Nice.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBlack menWhen Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Walker as his anointed candidate, he figured the former Heisman Trophy winner, who guided the University of Georgia to a national championship in 1980, would have obvious appeal to Black voters, who turned out in force two years ago for Mr. Warnock, a minister at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.That proved a miscalculation. But many Black men were also less than enamored with a Black woman, Stacey Abrams, in her rematch with Mr. Kemp in the race for governor. Mr. Kemp won handily in November with 53 percent of the vote, even as Mr. Warnock nearly cleared 50 percent, in part because some Black men voted for Mr. Kemp and Mr. Warnock.On Tuesday, another Black male voter will be in the spotlight, the one who was so turned off by Ms. Abrams that he did not turn out Nov. 8. More than 76,000 voters who have cast runoff ballots already did not vote in the general election, according to GeorgiaVotes.com, a site that uses public data to analyze voting trends. That could be a sign of energized Black men.November’s ticket splittersGovernor Kemp’s 2.1 million votes in November outpaced Mr. Walker’s total by more than 200,000. And Mr. Warnock’s 1.9 million votes exceeded Ms. Abrams’s total by more than 130,000.Clearly, a large number of Georgians voted for both Mr. Kemp, a Republican, and Mr. Warnock, a Democrat.One question on Tuesday will be whether voters who came out to re-elect Mr. Kemp, and perhaps grudgingly voted to re-elect Mr. Warnock, will come out again only for Mr. Warnock.Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia at a Black Voices United for the Vote town hall event in Atlanta, in October.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesKemp votersAn even bigger question might be the corollary: Will Republican voters who turned out in November to vote for Mr. Kemp, and voted the straight Republican ticket, including for Mr. Walker, turn out again at all?Mr. Walker has proved to be a deeply flawed candidate. Even before primary voters chose him in May, he had been accused of domestic violence and stalking by an ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend and a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. Since then, he has had to own up to children out of wedlock. His son Christian Walker has publicly accused him of neglect and violence. And two women have said that Mr. Walker, who calls himself a devoutly anti-abortion Christian, pressed them to have abortions.Mr. Kemp’s popularity helped Mr. Walker win 48.5 percent of the vote last month. On Tuesday, Mr. Walker will have to do even better than that, and without the governor’s coattails. More

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      Georgia Runoff: What a Walker or Warnock Victory Would Look Like

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      Surprises are always possible, but there seem to be few reasons to think Herschel Walker can improve upon his showing last month.A voting line that stretched into the distance in Atlanta on Friday.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMaybe it’s because I’m a former high school debater, but every few weeks I try to go through the mental exercise of imagining what I would write the day after an election — if either side won.It can be an illuminating exercise. I did this every few weeks before the 2016 general election, and I was always struck by how easy it was to write a plausible post-election story explaining how and why Donald J. Trump would win the election. This year, it was also fairly easy to imagine how Democrats would fare well. In each case, it made it straightforward to explain the eventual result, even though each case seemed less likely than not.Today’s Georgia runoff is a very different case. The election seems about as close — or even closer — than those other contests. But if the Republican Herschel Walker wins, I don’t know how I would explain it. I would have to shrug my shoulders.Of course, that doesn’t mean he can’t win. Surprises happen. Sometimes, a football team with a great record loses to a team that hasn’t won a single game, even though there’s no good reason to expect it.And in some ways, a “surprise” in the runoff wouldn’t take anything especially unusual. The polls show a close race, with the incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock, leading by about three percentage points. Similarly, Mr. Walker trailed by less than a percentage point in the Nov. 8 election results, and historically, the runoff electorate has sometimes been more conservative. By those measures, it wouldn’t take much at all for Mr. Walker to win.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffHow Walker Could Win: Despite the steady stream of tough headlines for Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, he could prevail. Here’s how.Warnock’s Record: An electric car plant outside Savannah could be the central achievement for Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent. But Republicans aren’t giving him credit.Mixed Emotions: The contest might have been a showcase of Black political power in the Deep South. But many Black voters say Mr. Walker’s turbulent campaign has marred the moment.Insulin Prices: The issue is nowhere near as contentious as just about everything else raised in the race. But in a state with a high diabetes rate, it has proved a resonant topic.But it’s hard to come up with good reasons that Mr. Walker would do better in the runoff than he did a month ago, even if on any given Tuesday any candidate can win.The core issue for Mr. Walker is simple: He is a flawed and unpopular candidate, while Mr. Warnock, by contrast, is fairly popular. And unlike in the November election, the two are the only candidates on the ballot in most of the state. This poses a much greater challenge to Mr. Walker in the runoff election than it did in the general election.It’s easy to imagine several kinds of voters who backed Mr. Walker in November but who won’t be showing up this time. There’s the Republican who didn’t like Mr. Walker, but who showed up to vote for another Republican — like Brian Kemp in the governor’s race. There’s the Republican who might grudgingly vote for Mr. Walker if the Senate were on the line — as it appeared to be in November — but doesn’t think the stakes are high enough to support someone who 57 percent of voters said does not have strong moral values, according to the AP VoteCast survey.Worse for Mr. Walker, there’s reason to think these challenges have gotten worse since the Nov. 8 election. Mr. Warnock has outspent him by a wide margin on television. The polls now show Mr. Warnock doing even better than in the pre-election polls in November.The final turnout data from the November election also raises the possibility that it will be challenging for Mr. Walker to enjoy a more favorable turnout than he did last month. Turnout among previous Republican primary voters outpaced Democratic turnout, in no small part because the Black share of the electorate dipped to its lowest level since 2006. Indeed, Republican candidates won the most votes for U.S. House and the other statewide offices.In other words, there’s an argument that the electorate last month represented something more like a best-case scenario for Mr. Walker in a high-turnout election. He still didn’t win. Conversely, the early voting estimates raise the possibility that there’s some considerable upside for Mr. Warnock if the electorate looks a bit more like the ones in recent cycles. According to our estimates, the electorate is arguably consistent with one that’s a few points better for Democrats than in November.Despite a curtailed early voting window, nearly two million Georgia voters cast ballots ahead of today’s election. By our estimates, Mr. Warnock won these voters in November, 59-41, probably giving him a lead of nearly 400,000 votes.Black voters represented 32 percent of the early vote, up from 29 percent in November.But it’s hard to read too much into the early voting numbers. The restricted one-week voting period makes it impossible to directly compare the results with those of prior years. And there’s not any hard, factual basis to assert that Mr. Walker can’t overcome his deficit on Election Day.In fact, early voting and Election Day results are highly correlated — in the opposite direction. The better a party does in early voting, the worse it does on Election Day. But there’s no doubt that these numbers surpass any reasonable set of expectations that Democrats might have had. To the extent it offers any signal, it’s a good one for Mr. Warnock.The race may be close, but it’s hard to think of a good signal for Mr. Walker. More

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      The Last Senate Seat

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      Rachel Quester, Jessica Cheung and Mary Wilson and John Ketchum and Dan Powell, Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicGeorgia voters are heading to the polls for the final battle of the 2022 midterms — the runoff election between Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker.Both parties have their own challenges: Republicans have a candidate quality issue in Mr. Walker, and Democrats are concerned about the turnout of their voter coalition. One side, though, already seems resigned to losing.On today’s episodeMaya King, a politics reporter covering the South for The New York Times.Voters in Georgia last month during the early voting period for the runoff election.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBackground readingOn the eve of Georgia’s Senate runoff, Mr. Warnock warned his supporters about being overconfident, and Mr. Walker urged Republicans to flood the polls.The runoff will answer a big question — what’s more powerful: a candidate’s skills and experience, or the tug of political partisanship?There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Maya King contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

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      Warnock Claims Momentum in Georgia, as Walker Banks on Election Day Turnout

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      ATLANTA — In the final day before Georgia’s Senate runoff, Senator Raphael Warnock pleaded with supporters to tune out pundits predicting his victory and instead vote “like it’s an emergency” in a bitterly contested race that is closing out the midterm election cycle.His Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, the former football star recruited into the race by former President Donald J. Trump, made a circuit of north Georgia counties he won easily a month ago, urging Republicans who have avoided early voting to hit the polls Tuesday. “Got to get out the vote,” he said.The two men are vying in an election with major symbolic as well as practical ramifications. A Warnock victory would deliver Democrats a 51st vote in the Senate, where the party has for the past two years relied on Vice President Kamala Harris to break 50-50 ties. If Mr. Walker wins, Republicans would maintain joint control of Senate committees and two centrist Democratic senators, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, would maintain effective veto power over all legislation in the chamber.But the broader political stakes are just as significant. Democrats believe a victory would deliver proof they have transformed Georgia into an indisputable battleground, heralding a new era of Sun Belt politics and reshaping their strategies for winning the White House. A Walker victory, after his deeply troubled campaign and the G.O.P.’s clean sweep in statewide races this year, would reassert Republican dominance in the state.And for Mr. Trump, who three weeks ago began his third presidential campaign, Tuesday’s contest represents his last chance to claim victory in a battleground for one of his closest political acolytes.Mr. Walker on Sunday during a campaign stop at a restaurant in Dawsonville.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMr. Walker’s bus tour on Sunday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMore than $380 million has been spent on the race, the most of any election this year, according to OpenSecrets, a group that tracks money in politics. The runoff was prompted when neither candidate received 50 percent of the vote in last month’s general election.The number of early votes cast has topped 1.89 million, about half the turnout on Nov. 8. Both campaigns believe that group skews heavily Democratic. Republicans involved and allied with Mr. Walker acknowledged that tilt left the candidate needing to win about 60 percent of the in-person vote Tuesday to catch up. He won 56 percent of the Election Day vote in November, according to data from the Georgia secretary of state’s office.“There is still a path for Herschel Walker to win this race — he still could win,” Mr. Warnock told reporters after speaking to supporters at Georgia Tech on Monday. “We had a massive lead during the general. And so we know that there are differences in how people show up when they vote in this state. And so if there’s anything I’m worried about is that people will think that we don’t need their voice. We do.”What to Know About the Georgia Senate RunoffCard 1 of 6Another runoff in Georgia. More

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      Will Rain Dampen Voter Turnout for Georgia Senate Runoff?

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      The resolve of Georgia voters could again be tested in Tuesday’s Senate runoff, with some county officials seeking to manage expectations about wait times to vote, which they said could be significant.Wait times during early, in-person voting were indeed significant: Some Georgians, especially those in the Atlanta area, waited more than two hours to cast ballots in the nationally-watched contest between Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker.Both candidates are focused on turning out voters on Tuesday after an early voting period that was cut roughly in half by a new state law passed last year. But the potential for long waits could be an even greater factor, given the weather forecast for Tuesday: a 70 percent chance of rain in Atlanta, according to the National Weather Service.“We do anticipate lines,” Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, a spokeswoman for Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, said in an email on Monday. “Elderly voters who are unable to wait in lines should see a poll worker.”Last Monday, the wait time for early voting was 150 minutes in Alpharetta, Ga., a northern suburb of Atlanta in Fulton County, according to a website that tracks lines at polling places. At the same precinct, the wait was 90 minutes on Wednesday. Early voting ended on Friday.County officials sought to assure voters that its election department would be fully staffed for Tuesday’s election and said that they would have workers on call as needed. The county will post wait times on its voting app and on its website, Ms. Corbitt-Dominguez said.Under Georgia’s election rules, as long as voters are in line when the polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern time, they will be allowed to vote, according to Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the secretary of state, an office held by Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. Counties will typically send an election worker to stand with the last voter in line, Mr. Hassinger said on Monday.In Cobb County, which is northwest of Atlanta, Jacquelyn Bettadapur, the chair of the county’s Democratic Party and a statewide poll watcher, said that she did not expect lines there to be an issue.“Thirty minutes is considered the max that we should tolerate,” Ms. Bettadapur said on Monday. “So if we see wait times of an hour, we’re going to start putting eyes on that and figure out why.” More