Georgia voters are deciding today whether to give Democrats an extra seat in the Senate to cushion their majority in Congress next year.
Holding 51 Senate seats would mean Democrats would gain crucial control of all committees and reduce the influence of a single lawmaker within the party who chooses to stray from the party line.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, a reverend who once headed the Martin Luther King Jr. congregation, spent his final day before the election energizing voters with a DJ dance party at an Atlanta brewery
Donald Trump-backed former NFL star Herschel Walker, his challenger, spent Monday night with supporters at a shooting range in rural Cobb County.
Neither candidate secured a majority of the vote in the Nov. 8 midterm election, pushing them into a runoff on Tuesday that will be watched across the country.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. in the east coast state and closed at 7 p.m.
Photos show a rainy morning in Atlanta as voters armed with umbrellas line up to cast a ballot before dawn.
With the race expected to be close, it’s possible that a winner won’t be announced until Wednesday or later.
For the past month, President Joe Biden’s party has defied expectations of retaining control of the Senate, despite countless polls pointing to a Republican landslide in both houses of Congress.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. in Georgia and close at 7 p.m. for Tuesday’s Senate runoff
Peach State voters lined up before sunrise in front of the polling stations for the statewide watched election
Neither Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock nor Republican challenger Herschel Walker reached the required majority threshold to avoid today’s race
Biden tweeted Tuesday morning in support of Warnock, “Georgia, today is Election Day – and the eyes of the nation are on you.”
“Go to the elections and help broadcast [Warnock] back to the US Senate,” said the President.
If Walker wins on Tuesday, the dynamic in the Senate won’t change much.
The Democrats’ victory in flipping Pennsylvania’s red Senate seat to blue ensures they will still have a 50-50 split even if Warnock loses.
But a progressive pastor’s win would give Democrats a decisive majority without requiring Vice President Kamala Harris’s casting vote.
Under current rules, Harris’ position gives the Democrats the majority.
At the committee level, however, both parties work under a power-sharing agreement with an even number of senators on each side.
A 51-seat majority would give Democrats an extra seat over Republicans on Senate committees and allow for a smoother confirmation process for Biden’s judiciary and executive branch appointments.
Nominees would have a better chance of getting out of committees on a party-line vote — even if one of the president’s Democratic colleagues disagrees.
Walker, a former NFL star, greeted fans Tuesday morning at the Marietta Diner in Marietta, Georgia
Warnock, who voted early, spent Tuesday night throwing a DJ dance party for his supporters at an Atlanta brewery
For example, it was West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s opposition to Sarah Bloom Raskin – who chose Biden as chief constable of the Federal Reserve – that doomed her nomination before it could come to a vote.
Her progressive background has also been criticized by every Republican in the Senate.
Likewise, in December 2021, Manchin nailed the coffin of Biden’s progressively backed Build Back Better spending bill.
It was hampered by opposition from himself and fellow Conservative Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who each had issues with individual parts of the bill – to ensure all negotiations were an uphill battle from the start.
If Warnock wins, Democrats could afford to lose support for either Manchin or Sinema on Biden’s appointments or reconciliation legislation and still have hope of passing them.
In the general election, Warnock finished just ahead of his GOP challenger by 1,943,737 votes to 1,907,272, or 0.9 percent. But thanks to a third challenger, none of the candidates managed to pass the 50 percent hurdle, and so the top two finishers face off again, in accordance with Georgia’s electoral law.
If voters give Warnock a full term, Democrats will add one seat to their Senate majority
It was a rainy morning on runoff day in Atlanta, Georgia’s capital
According to the latest poll, Warnock is still ahead – 52 to 48 percent according to the latest CNN poll.
Peach State residents have now endured another torturous month of mud-slinging commercials to flood their airwaves as each contestant trades dirt for another.
The race focused on two things – each candidate tying the other to their party’s national leaders and attacks on moral characters, each highlighting the other’s hot-button story.
For Warnock, that means portraying Walker as a fundamentally rogue Trump acolyte and letting a slew of allegations surrounding domestic violence and paying for abortions speak for themselves.
For Walker, that means portraying his opponent as too liberal for Georgia and tying him to Biden’s agenda, which he blames for 40 years of high inflation, and pursuing his church’s murky charity operation.
More than 1.8 million have already voted in early voting, either in person or in absentia.
That total surpassed those who cast ballots in runoff elections in 2018 and 2016, state data shows, though they likely won’t surpass ballots in 2021, when Warnock entered a race with then-GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Sen was locked up. Jon Ossoff took on then-Senator David Perdue.