CNN –
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will win a Georgia Senate runoff, CNN projects, giving Democrats more power in the Senate next year and dealing a critical blow to former President Donald Trump after another defeat of their hand-picked candidates.
With Warnock’s defeat of Republican challenger Herschel Walker, Democrats will control 51 seats to the GOP’s 49.
The race caps a difficult midterm cycle for Republicans, who won a majority in the House but saw their hopes of dominance on Capitol Hill dashed by the troubled candidacies of some Trump-backed Senate candidates .
“There are no excuses in life and I’m not going to make any excuses now because we’ve had a big fight,” Walker told supporters after calling Warnock.
The runoff was a final midterm test of the former president’s influence as he embarks on a third bid for the White House. It was also a sign that after President Joe Biden carried the state in 2020, combined with two Senate victories that gave him a Democratic Senate in 2021, Georgia is now definitely a purple state.
In his victory speech, Warnock alluded to the fact that the second round was his fourth campaign in two years. “After a hard-fought campaign, or should I say campaigns, it’s an honor to say the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken.”
“I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we want for ourselves and our children,” Warnock continued. “You worked hard and here we are together.”
The president called Warnock after returning to Washington from an event in Arizona, tweeting: “Tonight Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected ultra MAGAism and most importantly sent a good man in the Senate. For six more years.
Recriminations came quickly to the GOP late Tuesday night.
“The only way to explain this is the quality of the candidates,” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan told CNN, noting the delta between Gov. Brian Kemp’s victory in November and where Walker appears to end up when all the recounts are counted. votes
He said he hoped Warnock’s victory would serve as a wake-up call for the GOP. “If we don’t bring our medicine here, it’s our fault. … Every Republican in this country should hold Donald Trump accountable for this.”
Many Republicans attributed the closeness of the race Tuesday night to the fact that Kemp came to Walker’s rescue in the runoff after keeping his distance during last month’s general election. Not only did he campaign for him, but he put the muscle of his own turnout operation into efforts to help the GOP Senate nominee.
Morale among Walker’s campaign staff hit an all-time low in recent days as it became clear his candidate would likely lose the race to Warnock, according to several people familiar with his campaign.
Several members of Walker’s staff grew frustrated as the runoff election progressed over the past month, feeling their advice for the embattled candidate was being ignored as outside voices with little political experience were empowered
In addition to facing a slew of scandals, Walker’s campaign tried to adjust its message to more closely align with Kemp’s success, but ultimately felt his candidate refused to accept strategic advice, he was reluctant to follow the campaign and largely declined. media interviews in recent days.
“He’s so proud that he doesn’t like to take advice,” a person familiar with the campaign told CNN, adding that he leaned on his wife Julie Blanchard for most decisions rather than empowering his team .
Democratic control of the Senate next year has already been decided by hard-fought contests in states like Nevada, where Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto held on to her seat despite headwinds, and Pennsylvania, where Democrat John Fetterman pick up a GOP seat. .
The Senate is split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking votes. That has given outsized power to moderate figures like Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have often single-handedly stymied their party’s ambitions. Warnock’s assurance of a full six-year term will allow Democrats to dispense with the current power-sharing arrangement with Republicans, while making it easier for Biden’s nominees to advance.
Biden and his advisers have been keenly aware of the significant difference a single additional seat can make. “It means a lot,” is how one Democrat familiar with White House thinking put it.
Although Warnock polled more votes than Walker in last month’s general election, he fell short of the majority needed to win outright. The runoff had attracted more than $80 million in ad spending, according to data from ad-tracking firm AdImpact, with Democrats spending about twice as much as Republicans.
Warnock had a narrow lead over Walker in a CNN poll released last week. Walker had a negative favorability rating as voters questioned his honesty after a series of scandals. He has denied reports that he pressured or encouraged women to have abortions, although he previously advocated a ban on the procedure without exceptions on the campaign trail. CNN’s KFile has reported that he is getting a tax break for a primary residence only this year at his Dallas, Texas-area home while he runs for the seat in Georgia.
The state broke records for single-day early voting last week, but the early voting period condenses significantly starting in 2021. The total number of voters declined by about 3.1 million in last year to about 1.87 million in 2022. Democrats were optimistic, in part, because of black voters, who strongly favored Warnock in the CNN poll. They accounted for nearly 32 percent of the early voting turnout, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
Walker, however, had strong turnout among GOP voters, who tend to vote in larger numbers on Election Day.
But Trump, who, like Biden, pulled away from the Peach State in the runoff, complicated the GOP’s fortunes across the country this year as voters rejected many of their candidates who denied the election to swing states
Some of the first signs of this came in Georgia two years ago, when his efforts to cast doubt on mail-in ballots and vote counting were blamed in part for the GOP’s 2021 two-run losses which gave the Democrats control of the Senate.
This year, the former president’s efforts to retaliate against Kemp, who rejected Trump’s demands to nullify the 2020 election, were soundly rejected by primary voters. Kemp easily defeated Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams last month, getting about 200,000 more votes than Walker.
After seeing losses in key states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, top Republicans are planning a more aggressive push to shore up primary candidates they see as more eligible. The incoming chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Montana Sen. Steve Daines, told CNN, “Obviously, you want to see candidates who can win the general election, and we’ll continue to work on that.”
This story has been updated with additional news.