Staff Report –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock won re-election to the United States Senate Tuesday over Republican former star fullback Herschel Walker, handing Democrats a 51st seat and a clear majority in the upper chamber and insurance against a slim majority by Republicans in the House.

With 95 percent of the votes counted and reported as of Wednesday morning, Warnock was up with 51.4 percent of the vote, 1,817,465 votes, over Walker’s 48.6 percent, 1,719,868 votes, according to The New York Times.

Some analysts say the result cements Georgia as a purple battleground state certain to play a prominent role in the 2024 presidential election, as Democrats have now won three Senate races in the past two years in the former Republican red state which President Joe Biden, the Democrat, carried in 2020.

“Let’s celebrate for a little while on this mountain,” Warnock, a Baptist preacher, told a cheering crowd of supporters. “Let’s dance because we deserve it. But tomorrow we go back down into the valley to do the work.”

Walker’s defeat is a setback for Donald Trump as he seeks the Republican nomination to run for the White House again in 2024. The former president endorsed Walker and dozens of other high-profile Republicans in this year’s midterm elections, but most of those he endorsed lost.

Warnock highlighted those concerns in campaign appearances and a barrage of television ads that made the race the most expensive of the 2022 midterm season, with more than $400 million spent.

“I’m not going to make any excuses now, because we put up one heck of a fight,” Walker told supporters as he conceded Tuesday night.

At the Atlanta ballroom where Warnock’s supporters gathered on election night, several hundred revelers erupted in applause when U.S. television networks called the race.

Many began dancing, some held their drinks in the air, and others took selfies to memorialize the moment. The group, a mix of young people, political activists, and wealthy professionals and donors, reflected the coalition of voters that Warnock drew on to win.

The election went to a runoff Tuesday, Nov. 8 after neither candidate secured 50 percent of the vote.

Warnock’s victory was powered by a strong showing in urban and suburban counties, including Atlanta’s Fulton County, where the incumbent Democrat was winning 77 percent of the vote – a higher share than he won in November.

Democrats now are on track for a 51-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate, which will make it slightly easier to advance Biden’s nominees for judicial and administrative posts.

Much legislation will still require Republican support. But, with an extra vote to spare, Democrats may not now always need the cooperation of centrist senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who were frequently at odds with their party as Democrats tried to advance Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda over the past two years.

They will, however, face a more formidable roadblock in the U.S. House of Representatives, after Republicans won a narrow majority on Nov. 8, though they fell short of the “red wave” that some in the party had forecast.

Warnock, who like Walker is Black, is pastor of the historic Atlanta church where assassinated civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. preached. It is his second runoff victory in two years, after he won the seat in January 2021.

Venkayla Haynes, 28, said Warnock’s win was especially meaningful after months of organizing get-out-the-vote efforts for both the general election and then the runoff.

“I’m very happy, I’m very excited that we won and that Black people have a candidate who represents the community and the issues they care about,” said Haynes as she danced at Warnock’s victory party.

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