The Georgia Senate election between incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker is headed to a runoff, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office confirmed.
Neither Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) nor Republican Herschel Walker was able to garner 50 percent during Tuesday’s election, forcing a sprint to a head-to-head matchup on Dec. 6 between the two candidates. On Wednesday, Warnock led Walker by just over 35,000 votes, but Georgia law requires a runoff if no candidate clears 50 percent.
Walker, who won a Heisman Trophy and helped steer the University of Georgia to a college football national championship four decades ago, jumped into the GOP race to face off against Warnock in the summer of last year, after months of support and encouragement to run for the Senate by former President Donald Trump, his longtime friend. It is the former football star’s first run for office.
Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Jr. used to preach, narrowly defeated Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a 2021 special election and was running to serve a full six-year term.
