Why Senate control could hinge once again on Georgia runoff

Control of the Senate could once again come down to a familiar scenario: a runoff election in Georgia. 

Even after Republican nominee Herschel Walker ran up against allegations that he paid for his then-girlfriend to have an abortion more than a decade ago — which he has denied — polling still shows a tight race between him and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D). Neither candidate is breaking 50 percent support, leaving both parties to confront the possibility that the fight for the Senate could head into overtime. 

Such a scenario could leave the Senate majority hanging in the balance for weeks after Election Day much like it did after the 2020 elections, when Democrats recaptured control of the upper chamber only after Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) narrowly won a pair of January runoff elections against GOP incumbents. 

“We’re hoping for the best, but it’s definitely something we are fully preparing for,” said Stephen Lawson, a Republican strategist who is working with a Walker-aligned PAC, 34N22. 

“If it does end up going to a runoff, no matter who comes in first or second, I think it’s going to be a jump ball and I think there’s a good chance that it ends up deciding the fate of the Senate again. A Georgia runoff redux, if you will.” 

To be sure, Election Day is still nearly a month away and both parties are holding out the possibility that a handful of undecided voters could break for a candidate and put that nominee over the 50 percent mark. 

Warnock and Walker are set to meet on Friday for their only debate, offering them both a chance to make their case.  

And whether control of the Senate comes down to another runoff in Georgia would depend on the outcomes of races in other battleground states, like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Republicans need to net just one seat in the Senate to recapture the majority, but strong Democratic performances in several contests have complicated that goal. 

But the potential for — and significance of — a runoff in the Peach State is difficult to ignore.  

Georgia — along with Louisiana — is one of only two states that requires candidates to receive a majority of the vote to win an election outright, and this year Warnock and Walker will be on the ballot with a third candidate, Libertarian Chase Oliver, whom some polls show scoring as much as 3 or 4 percent of the vote. 

One survey from Emerson College and The Hill released on Tuesday found Warnock still falling short of the majority support he’ll need to win reelection. He led Walker in that survey 48 percent to 46 percent, while another 2.5 percent said they plan to vote for either Oliver or someone else in November. 

Another poll from InsiderAdvantage and Fox 5 in Atlanta fielded last week found Warnock notching 47 percent support to Walker’s 44 percent. Oliver pulled 3 percent support in that survey. 

While that poll, which was conducted the day after The Daily Beast published a story detailing the allegations against Walker, showed the Republican candidate losing some ground in the race since September, Matt Towery, a Georgia-based pollster and the founder of InsiderAdvantage, said that it’s only the latest sign that a runoff may be imminent. 

“Walker has dropped since our September survey, which is not surprising,” Towery said. “However, the votes shift around but do not seem to push the incumbent near the plus-one-vote number needed to win.” 

Warnock’s campaign acknowledged how tight the race has become. 

“Here’s what we know: this race will be close, which is why we can’t take anything for granted and are working hard every day to reelect Reverend Warnock, so he can continue fighting in the Senate to protect and save jobs, lower costs for hardworking families and stand up for Georgia servicemembers and veterans,” campaign manager Quentin Fulks said. 

It wouldn’t be the first time, or even the second time, the presence of a third-party candidate helped push a Georgia Senate race into a runoff. In 2008, former Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) was forced into a runoff against Democrat Jim Martin after Libertarian Allen Buckley received more than 3 percent of the vote. 

A similar scenario played out in 2020, when former Sen. David Perdue (R) fell just about a quarter of a percentage point short of defeating Ossoff in the November general election. The Libertarian candidate in that race won more than 2 percent of the vote. 

But there’s a new catch this time. A sweeping elections law signed last year shortened the runoff period from nine weeks to four weeks, meaning that if the race between Warnock and Walker heads into overtime, it’ll set off a hectic campaign dash to a Dec. 6 runoff vote. 

“It would literally be an all-out 24-hour-a-day sprint. Not only is it a much shorter time frame, but it’s right over the holidays. Thanksgiving would be smack in the middle of early voting,” Lawson, who worked on former Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s (R-Ga.) 2020 campaign — including during her runoff against Warnock — said.  

Walker’s campaign did not respond to The Hill’s requests for comment on this story.

Some strategists are skeptical that a runoff will actually materialize. Jay Williams, a Georgia-based Republican strategist, said that the race between Walker and Warnock has become so nationalized that he believes a runoff is unlikely.  

For one, Walker could get a boost from Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who will also be on the ballot in November and is polling well ahead of his Democratic rival Stacey Abrams. At the same time, Williams said, the fact that Warnock isn’t breaking 50 percent in most public polls should be a cause for concern.  

“My thought is that someone’s going to get a break late here and get some momentum going into the election,” Williams said. “[A runoff] is always a possibility, though I just don’t know how realistic it is. I don’t see a crazy ton of drop off from Kemp — who’s going to win this thing — to Walker.” 

“Ultimately, I think it’s still Walker’s to lose,” he added. “The fact that you have the incumbent U.S. senator pulling below 50 isn’t good for him.” 

Still, Williams said, a runoff would be an unpredictable affair, and the outcome could ultimately hinge more on which party comes out on top in November than anything else. 

“I think generically speaking it’d be advantage Walker in a runoff, but I think it’ll be up to the makeup of the Senate,” he said. “If Republicans are going to have the majority no matter what, it’s going to have a different impact. If Democrats have it, that could also change things.”