Warnock Claims Momentum in Georgia, as Walker Banks on Election Day Turnout

ATLANTA — Within the ultimate day earlier than Georgia’s Senate runoff, Senator Raphael Warnock pleaded with supporters to tune out pundits predicting his victory and as an alternative vote “prefer it’s an emergency” in a bitterly contested race that’s closing out the midterm election cycle.

His Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, the previous soccer star recruited into the race by former President Donald J. Trump, made a circuit of north Georgia counties he gained simply a month in the past, urging Republicans who’ve prevented early voting to hit the polls Tuesday. “Received to get out the vote,” he mentioned.

The 2 males are vying in an election with main symbolic in addition to sensible ramifications. A Warnock victory would ship Democrats a 51st vote within the Senate, the place the get together has for the previous two years relied on Vice President Kamala Harris to interrupt 50-50 ties. If Mr. Walker wins, Republicans would keep joint management of Senate committees and two centrist Democratic senators, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, would keep efficient veto energy over all laws within the chamber.

However the broader political stakes are simply as important. Democrats consider a victory would ship proof they’ve reworked Georgia into an indeniable battleground, heralding a brand new period of Solar Belt politics and reshaping their methods for profitable the White Home. A Walker victory, after his deeply troubled marketing campaign and the G.O.P.’s clear sweep in statewide races this 12 months, would reassert Republican dominance within the state.

And for Mr. Trump, who three weeks in the past started his third presidential marketing campaign, Tuesday’s contest represents his final likelihood to assert victory in a battleground for certainly one of his closest political acolytes.

Greater than $380 million has been spent on the race, essentially the most of any election this 12 months, in response to OpenSecrets, a bunch that tracks cash in politics. The runoff was prompted when neither candidate acquired 50 % of the vote in final month’s common election.

The variety of early votes solid has topped 1.89 million, about half the turnout on Nov. 8. Each campaigns consider that group skews closely Democratic. Republicans concerned and allied with Mr. Walker acknowledged that tilt left the candidate needing to win about 60 % of the in-person vote Tuesday to catch up. He gained 56 % of the Election Day vote in November, in response to knowledge from the Georgia secretary of state’s workplace.

“There may be nonetheless a path for Herschel Walker to win this race — he nonetheless may win,” Mr. Warnock informed reporters after talking to supporters at Georgia Tech on Monday. “We had an enormous lead in the course of the common. And so we all know that there are variations in how individuals present up after they vote on this state. And so if there’s something I’m nervous about is that individuals will suppose that we don’t want their voice. We do.”

In some methods, Mr. Walker was working a final-day get-out-the-vote marketing campaign ripped from a era previous, when the overwhelming majority of votes have been nonetheless solid in individual on Election Day. Mr. Warnock — who additionally gained a runoff election two years in the past — had adjusted to fashionable voting patterns and Georgia’s voting guidelines, which allowed for per week of early voting.

At Mr. Warnock’s current occasions, it was tough for him to search out supporters who’re ready till Tuesday to vote. When requested who had voted early, practically each hand went up at stops at schools and Black church buildings the final two days.

“I’ve been preaching lengthy sufficient to know that I’m preaching to the choir,” Mr. Warnock, the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, mentioned on Sunday at a Black church in Athens.

On Monday, when a meals supply app driver dropped off sandwiches for the Warnock marketing campaign at its occasion at Georgia Tech, a pair of energetic volunteers pressed him about whether or not he had voted already. (He hadn’t, and mentioned he wasn’t positive he would on Tuesday.)

“This ultimate push is all about constructing enthusiasm and momentum into Election Day,” Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, a detailed Warnock ally who has appeared at a lot of his marketing campaign stops, mentioned throughout an interview Monday. “We need to mobilize as a lot vitality as doable to get out the vote to achieve people who may not in any other case hear from campaigns.”

In November, Mr. Warnock completed 37,700 votes forward of Mr. Walker out of practically 4 million solid. Mr. Warnock consolidated Democratic voters, whereas Mr. Walker struggled to rally his get together behind him.

At Mr. Walker’s ultimate rally on Monday, at a gun vary in Kennesaw, a conservative exurb about 45 minutes from Atlanta, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina spoke to a crowd of about 100 supporters. She inspired them to end up to vote and get others to the polls.

“There isn’t any purple wave. There’s both turnout or not,” she mentioned, including that she requested Mr. Walker to replenish his marketing campaign bus with voters to take them to polling locations.

“We are able to present America that we’re about to proper the ship.”

Within the runoff, Black voters, a slice of the voters that has overwhelmingly rejected Mr. Walker’s bid, make up about 32 % of early voters, a determine six proportion factors greater than within the November election.

“I come from a household the place we’ve all finished early voting,” mentioned Jordan Artis, a 21-year-old worldwide affairs pupil at Georgia Tech who mentioned she waited 80 minutes to vote final week and got here to see Mr. Warnock on Monday. Her shut buddies, Ms. Artis mentioned, have already voted too.

Whereas his advisers and allies quietly lowered expectations, Mr. Walker on Monday mentioned he was feeling “fairly good” as he shook palms and took pictures with voters at a well-liked diner in Flowery Department, an Atlanta exurb in a county the place he took 71 % of the Nov. 8 vote.

He later delivered unusually brief remarks — freed from his signature lengthy tangents — to about 75 supporters at a winery in Gilmer County, one other Republican stronghold.

“Tomorrow is a giant day,” he mentioned, asking the group who had voted. Two-thirds of the group raised their palms. “That is what we’ve obtained to do — we’ve obtained to vote.”

Mr. Walker’s supporters on Monday disregarded worries that poor climate — rain is within the Tuesday forecast for the Atlanta space and North Georgia — or low vitality would diminish Election Day turnout.

“I’m feeling very inspired. I feel he’s obtained this,” mentioned Judy Shinall, 77, a Walker supporter from Ackworth. Ms. Shinall acknowledged the get together has fallen brief at clutch time, most lately two years in the past when Mr. Warnock gained a runoff for a particular election. “Republicans typically, you recognize, gained’t get on the market. And that is essential. Tomorrow is it,” she mentioned.

Mr. Walker was wrapping up a marketing campaign that seems to have didn’t consolidate the disparate wings of his get together. He ran onerous towards the get together’s Trump-aligned base, repelling reasonable parts of the coalition that propelled Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, to victory.

Mr. Walker was pummeled by damaging headlines all through the marketing campaign, together with accusations from ladies he has dated and been married to that he was bodily abusive. Two different former girlfriends mentioned he urged them to have abortions, though he ran as an abortion opponent. (Mr. Walker denied the claims.) He additionally confronted questions on his residency, after dwelling in Texas for many years earlier than shifting again to Georgia when he started this marketing campaign.

Mr. Kemp stored far from Mr. Walker in the course of the common election. However within the runoff, he turned over his political operation to assist, recorded a tv advert and appeared at one marketing campaign occasion alongside Mr. Walker.

Different Republicans by no means obtained onboard. In current days, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan of Georgia, who didn’t search re-election this 12 months after repeatedly condemning Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcomes of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, has finished a media tour explaining why he stood in an early-voting line for an hour however then declined to vote for Mr. Walker.

“I feel Herschel Walker will most likely go down as one of many worst Republican candidates in our get together’s historical past,” Mr. Duncan informed CBS News in an interview broadcast Tuesday.

The runoff is happening beneath new voting guidelines written by Georgia’s Republican state legislators and signed into regulation by Mr. Kemp. After the victories by Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff in January 2021, Georgia regulation now forbids new voter registration between the final election and the runoff.

Republicans additionally lower in half the time period between the 2 contests, restricted the early-voting interval and made voting by mail tougher, amongst different restrictions on mail voting and drop bins.

Some Republican voters expressed confusion concerning the runoff guidelines.

David Mathews, 74, a retired supervisor at a petroleum firm who was having breakfast together with his fiancé and a good friend on the Flowery Department diner, the place Mr. Walker started his Monday marketing campaign swing, mentioned he didn’t notice that his polling location had been open for early voting, which ended on Friday.

“They didn’t have the indicators out,” he mentioned, earlier than digging into biscuits and gravy with bacon. Mr. Mathews mentioned he deliberate to solid his poll Tuesday for Mr. Walker.

Mr. Warnock’s marketing campaign and his allies spent tens of millions pushing supporters again to the polls. “Yet one more time, Georgia,” screamed his advertisements on billboards and cellphones that urged supporters to vote early for him. By the marketing campaign’s ultimate hours, he acknowledged that his supporters is perhaps worn out.

“I do know you is perhaps drained,” he mentioned at a Black church on Sunday evening in Athens. “I get drained, too.”

Reid J. Epstein reported from Atlanta and Athens, Jazmine Ulloa from Flowery Department, and Maya King from Ellijay.