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Candidates compete to win Senate seat

Candidates compete to win Senate seat

Candidates compete to win Senate seat

Candidates competes to win a important Senate seat

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  • Tuesday is the fifth time in four years that Georgia’s seven million registered voters will go to the polls.
  • In the last four years, candidates from both parties have missed that mark twice.
  • The difference between the two men is no more than a point or two, so every vote counts.
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Because of a quirk in the state’s election law, candidates for statewide positions in general elections must not only get more votes than everyone else, but also get at least half of the votes cast.

In the last four years, candidates from both parties have missed that mark twice. So, both of Georgia’s US Senate seats and another one will have to go to a run-off election in 2021.

The current Democrat, southern Baptist preacher Raphael Warnock from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s old church in downtown Atlanta, will run against former football player and Republican Herschel Walker, who is backed by former President Donald Trump. Walker has been accused of paying for his wives and girlfriends to get abortions, even though he says he is very against abortion.

The two will compete against each other for the chance to represent a state that has been in the middle of a lot of political turmoil recently.

True, 99 of the 100 Senate seats have already been decided by the midterm elections. The Democrats have 50 seats, while the Republicans have 49. Since the vice president can break a tie vote in the chamber, the run-off in Georgia will not change who is in charge.

So, you might ask, why does the run-off in Georgia matter? On the most basic level, having 51 senators is better than having 50.

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It means that even if you lose one supporter on a tough issue, you can still get what you want. This will be important for senators like Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, which is a very Republican state, and is up for election in 2024.

Senator Manchin has already shown that he has a lot of power in the current Congress. If he wants to keep his seat in 2024, he’ll need to show his conservative constituents that he’s not a Joe Biden fanboy.

When you have 51 senators, you also have more power over how the complicated committee structures work. One of the Senate’s most important jobs is to approve nominations of judges to the federal bench. This is a very political process in this very political country, so it will be easier to get your way.

All of this means that the big thing driving this race, who controls the Senate, has already been decided. However, the parties are still pouring tens of millions of dollars into this race, and TV ads are at a fever pitch.

There is a direct link between how close the race is and how nasty the advertising is.

The difference between the two men is no more than a point or two, so every vote counts. Both sides have been fighting over the airwaves, which has cost an estimated $70 million (£57 million). Both of them have made attacks on the other’s personality and private lives.

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The Walker camp has shown videos that supposedly show Raphael Warnock’s ex-wife crying after a fight with her husband. They say he was in charge of a camp for poor kids where “urine was thrown at the kids” and that he was in charge of apartments for poor people that were “full of human faeces and even rotting corpses.”

In his ads, Warnock has said that Herschel Walker “wears lies like a badge of honour.” They say he lied about his education, the money he gave to charity, his business career, and a strange incident in which the former football player seemed to say he had worked in law enforcement when he hadn’t.

Associated political proxies and action committees have gone after Mr. Walker over disturbing claims of abuse and what they say is hypocrisy about abortion. Given all the bad news about him, it’s surprising that he’s still polling so close to the front in the race. The fact that his supporters still support him shows how tribal some races can be.

But when you look at the numbers, there are some things that Mr. Walker should be worried about. On November 8, he was the only Republican running for the whole state who didn’t get more than 50% of the vote. That means a lot of Republicans made a conscious decision not to back him.

His problem with more moderate Republicans was made clear when outgoing Republican Lieutenant-Governor Geoff Duncan told the world that he had waited in line for an hour to vote early this week, but couldn’t bring himself to vote for Scott Walker.

But Raphael Warnock can’t just sit back and enjoy his success. Even though he and fellow Democrat John Ossoff won their run-offs at the beginning of 2021, this went against what has happened in most run-offs in Georgia since the 1960s, which is that Republicans have gotten more votes. This was found by an analysis by Five Thirty Eight.

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On the other hand, since there are no other Republicans on the ballot this time, it may be harder for Mr. Walker to get his party members to vote at all, and he may not have helped himself by taking five days off over Thanksgiving, which was the last big push.

He has also had trouble getting big names to campaign for him. This week, for example, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn’t even bother. Raphael Warnock, on the other hand, has been able to get former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama to help him.

Donald Trump has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Walker and even mentioned him when he announced his run for president at Mar-a-Lago. However, he has not travelled to support the candidate in person, and many people will look at the final numbers to see what they could mean for his chances of running for president.

Most of all, after Tuesday’s election, Georgians will be able to breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the fact that they won’t have to fill out ballot forms, wait in line, or deal with the constant, violent fights that pass for politics in the Peach State for almost two years.

 

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