Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is ahead of Trump-endorsed Republican challenger Herschel Walker in another new survey.
The poll was sponsored by the campaign of Charlie Bailey, the Democratic pick for lieutenant governor in Georgia’s elections this year. The polling found Bailey tied with state Sen. Burt Jones, the current GOP pick in the same race and a close ally of former President Donald Trump who was involved in the scheme in the state to assemble faked electoral votes for Trump despite Biden’s win there. The poll, conducted by Research Affiliates, found Bailey and Jones with 43 percent of the support apiece. As for the state’s U.S. Senate race, in which Warnock is hoping to win a full term of six years after getting elected to serve the final two years of the last term of the late Johnny Isakson, Warnock garnered 49 percent of the support, while Walker got 46 percent.
That margin of three percentage points dividing the two candidates is within the margin of error reported for the survey. However, it’s worth noting that the pool of participants in this poll clearly wasn’t just a bunch of Democrats: former state legislative leader-turned-voting rights activist Stacey Abrams was tied with incumbent Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia gubernatorial race, with each candidate getting 47 percent of the support. Other recent polling in the Georgia Senate race, including a Fox News survey conducted by a bipartisan team of pollsters, found Warnock in the lead. The Fox poll showed Warnock with a lead of 4 percent. In the weighted average from FiveThirtyEight of the Georgia Senate race, Warnock was ahead of Walker by a 2.7 percent margin, as of Friday. In the same site’s deluxe set of forecasts for the midterms, it rated the Georgia Senate race a toss-up as of Friday afternoon.
Decision Desk HQ, another elections data and analysis site, rated the Georgia Senate race as leaning towards the Democrats as of the same point. Elsewhere in the map of Senate elections this year, Democrats have further positive chances in states including Arizona and Pennsylvania, where Democratic contenders Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and John Fetterman, the current lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, lead GOP challengers Blake Masters and Mehmet Oz by double-digits in some polling. Warnock’s presence in the Senate, with that of his fellow Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, was the clincher that delivered control of the chamber to the Democrats and allowed the party to undertake ambitious initiatives ever since, from the COVID-19 relief package passed early last year to the more recent piece of legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
That bill, which passed the Senate first before expected passage in the House and a presidential signature, contains the largest single investment by the U.S. government into fighting climate change in history. Notably, the recent Fox survey of the Georgia Senate race found a significant gap in enthusiasm behind Warnock and Walker. A full 69 percent of Warnock’s Georgia supporters expressed enthusiasm about their candidate, but just 51 percent of Walker’s backers said the same about the Trump-backed contender.
