Democrats broaden US Senate majority with Raphael Warnock run-off victory

Democrats’ new outright Senate majority means the party will no longer have to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Republicans

The Republican candidate’s defeat bookends the party’s struggles this year to win with flawed candidates cast from Donald Trump’s mould

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US Senator Raphael Warnock speaks in Atlanta, Georgia, after a projected win in the US midterm run-off on Tuesday against his Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:50pm, 7 Dec 2022

Raphael Warnock has defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a run-off election in the state of Georgia, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the US Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden’s term and helping cap an underwhelming midterm cycle for the Republican Party in the last major vote of the year.

With Warnock’s second run-off victory in as many years, Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority, gaining a seat from the current 50-50 split with John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania. There will be divided government, however, with Republicans having narrowly flipped House control.

In last month’s election, Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast, but fell short of the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a run-off. The senator appeared to be headed for a wider final margin in Tuesday’s run-off. Walker, a football legend who first gained fame at the University of Georgia and later in the NFL in the 1980s, was unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions.

“The numbers look like they’re not going to add up,” Walker told supporters in a concession speech late on Tuesday local time at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. “There’s no excuses in life and I’m not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight.”

Herschel Walker gives a concession speech during his election night party after losing the run-off election to his US Senator Raphael Warnock. Photo: Reuters

Warnock, Georgia’s first black senator, was slated to address a jubilant crowd at a nearby downtown hotel soon after Walker’s remarks.