It is a historic re-election regardless of the outcome. For the first time, there are two black candidates in Georgia vying for the Senate seat. Herschel Walker is challenging incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock. Photo: AP When there were by-elections in the United States in November, none of them received more than 50 percent of the vote. Georgia’s election law therefore requires voters to go to the polls once again. In the polls, incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock has a slight lead over Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Outside a polling station in Atlanta, people wait their turn to vote. Photo: CARLOS BARRIA / Reuters The Democrats already have the 50 seats they need. Together with the Vice President’s vote, they have a majority in the Senate. Today’s election is nevertheless important for the Democrats because Georgia can give them a clear majority. A pure majority gives the Democrats more power in important committees in the Senate and less power to conservative Democratic senators, who have stopped several of President Biden’s initiatives in the last couple of years. According to RealClearPolitics’ average poll, Democrat Warnock leads by 3.7 percentage points. Warnock has warned against the favorite stamp. Yesterday, his supporters told him to go to the polls. The Democrats’ Raphael Warnock (53) has received the most advance votes. Bad weather on election day can lead to lower turnout. Photo: CHENEY ORR / Reuters Both parties are working hard to get people off the couch and into the polls. Republicans hope to slow the Democrats’ progress after the midterm elections. The party’s supporters don’t seem to mind Walker’s lack of political experience. The former sports star is accused of lying and violence. The campaign has been controversial. Herschel Walker is a soccer celebrity in the United States. The Republicans’ goal is to make him a senator for Georgia. Photo: ALYSSA POINTER / Reuters Former President Donald Trump ensured in May that Walker became the Republican candidate. Trump himself lost Georgia in 2020. He has not actively participated in the election campaign, as other well-known Republicans, such as Nikki Haley, have done. Former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley supports her party colleague Herschel Walker in the fight for a seat in the Senate. Photo: ALEX WONG / AFP President Joe Biden has also stayed away from states where he has had low support, writes the AP news agency. Before visiting Georgia, Biden has been raising money for the campaign and making calls to Democrats. Expensive Senate seat Over 415 million dollars (over 4 billion Norwegian kroner, at today’s exchange rate) has been spent in the fight for a seat in the Senate, figures from OpenSecrets show. The election campaign in Georgia is thus the most expensive of the year. It can be difficult to measure spending. Most visible is the purchase of political advertising in the media. Raphael Warnock has been running several election campaign events daily to meet as many voter groups as possible in Georgia. Here with students in Atlanta. Photo: ALYSSA POINTER / Reuters The parties have also poured millions of kroner into the apparatus that will get hold of voters and get them to vote. Incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock won by 37,700 votes in November. Georgia’s election law states that no one wins an election without half of the vote. Voter record in Georgia Over 75,000 voters who did not turn up at the election last month have cast their ballots in the run-off. Advance voting ended before the weekend. Paws and hands are pressed to create trust and votes. At an election campaign event, Republican Herschel Walker (60) takes a picture with a dog. Photo: ALYSSA POINTER / Reuters Almost 2 million voters have already visited a polling station in the swing state. The result is expected around 4 night until Wednesday Norwegian time. Nearly 8 million people are registered to vote in Georgia, but often only half turn out. Democrats in Georgia are best at voting in advance, either in person or by mail, data from TargetSmart, reported by the NBC channel, show. The numbers claim that the Democrats beat the Republicans by 52 percent to 39 percent in advance voting. The Republicans tend to mobilize theirs on election day itself. Rain has been reported in the state, and this may play a role in the motivation to stand in line outside the polling stations, American media point out. Umbrellas queuing to enter the polling station in the big city of Atlanta. Photo: CARLOS BARRIA / Reuters The Senate election in Georgia received enormous attention two years ago. At that time, the election would determine which party gained a majority in the Senate. Now it is just as much about consolidating a position of power. If the Republicans win, they can count on the support of a couple of Democratic senators when they want to block Biden’s proposal. West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Senator Kyrsten Sinema are among the Democrats who do not always follow the party line. If the Democrats win another seat, Manchin and Sinema will lose some of their power. The election in Georgia can also tell something about the kind of influence Donald Trump has in the Republican Party. The former president, who will run for president in 2024, has recruited several candidates in this by-election. Georgia is Trump’s last opportunity to polish the statistics. He is probably aware that Georgia has rewarded several of the incumbent politicians who have gone against him. The state’s Secretary of the Interior Brad Raffensperger, who refused to find additional votes for Trump after the election defeat in 2020, won the party’s nomination battle. Gov. Brian Kemp also crushed his Trump-backed rival as Georgia Republicans decided who they wanted as candidates.
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Contest for Georgia’s senate seat – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
