Georgia’s senate race

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next: the battle for a pivotal U.S. Senate seat in Georgia.

Just a couple of weeks ago, polls seemed to give incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock a small— but solid— lead over GOP challenger, Herschel Walker.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: But four of the last five polls give Walker a slight lead. Now, polls can be wrong. But taken as a whole, they are accurate to measure trends. And the race has been trending toward Walker, but it remains very tight.

Here to talk about this race is Professor Peter Wielhouwer. He’s the Director of the Institute for Government and Politics at Western Michigan University and a graduate of the University of Georgia.

REICHARD: Professor, good morning!

PETER WIELHOUWER, GUEST: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Glad that you’re here. Well, we’ll get to the Senate race in a moment, but I first want to ask you about how politics has shifted in Georgia. For a long time, Georgia was reliably red. Then it seems to have turned purple. So what changed?

WIELHOUWER: Well, I think if we take the long view for Georgia politics, long before it was reliably red, it was reliably blue. And so we see a massive shift that took place in the last quarter of the 20th century. And I think that what's going on now is a combination of a natural pendulum of politics shifting from one side to the other. And as Georgia itself has changed, it's become more diverse in its economy and its population. So that has made it a little bit less predictable than it once was. And we're seeing that it's just more competitive now than it used to be.

REICHARD: Well let’s talk candidates now. We know that Herschel Walker comes with some baggage. Family problems in the past and his own son spoke out against him recently. Plenty of fodder for negative attack ads on him.

On the other side, Sen. Warnock also has some baggage. His ex-wife says he’s not the man that he presents himself to be and she’s made several accusations as well. Warnock is a reverend and a church leader.

In your view, how have those accusations against either man affected the race?

WIELHOUWER: Well, I think people looking at politics and politicians today aren’t as shocked about politicians having baggage as much as they maybe were in previous generations. We are much more aware now, due to a variety of different things, such as the way the press covers politicians, that these are human beings, right? And they have flaws and some of those flaws are quite deep.

I think the credibility question has really hurt Herschel Walker, not so much that, of course, I don't have any idea whether the accusations against him are true. But when we look at polling both from the New York Times and from the University of Georgia, it does seem like Herschel Walker's baggage and the accusations against him—even if they're unfounded—has hurt him a lot more. We see a softer support for him, a softer sense that he's trustworthy among Republicans even, and definitely Independents, than we see among Raphael Warnock. So my sense is that the accusations have been much clearer and much more direct against Herschel Walker. And that even though he's an icon in Georgia, and certainly as a UGA grad, he's an icon for those of us who are Bulldogs, the challenge for him is that the accusations have seemed to undercut his support among Republicans. And it's not that Republicans have all of a sudden decided that Raphael Warnock is more trustworthy. It's just that we see a much higher percentage of Republicans who are not sure and don't know about whether Herschel Walker is trustworthy. And that's a bit of a red flag for his candidacy.

REICHARD: What would you say are the major factors that will decide this race then?

WIELHOUWER: Well, as you pointed out at the opening, this is a much tighter race now than it was a month ago. And in a very tight race like this, where both sides are pretty baked in, both sides are pretty polarized in terms of the candidates. It really will just hinge on voter turnout, plus voter turnout, plus voter turnout. It's just a very tight race. And we just it really just depends on which side does a better job in this last week of mobilization does a better job with regard to making sure that their supporters get up to the polls. And the big unknown in this process is how tight this is going to be because Georgia is a recall state. The candidate that wins has to get an absolute majority of the votes cast. So if neither one of these candidates gets a majority, we're right back to where we were in December 2020 when Raphael Warnock won in a runoff election again.

REICHARD: Let’s turn to the race for governor in Georgia now. The incumbent Republican, Brian Kemp, has a fairly commanding lead right now … almost 8 points in an average of recent polls. Do you think the big lead there has affected the Senate race?

WIELHOUWER: As I look at the dynamic here it seems to me to be mostly independent. The way that these candidacies, these four different candidates relate to each other and are in the public's mind is just really quite different. With the Kemp and Adams race,  this is a rematch as you know. And so you have a rematch of the candidacies from four years ago. And both of those have a pretty well-baked in name recognition. And voters are not necessarily unsure about what to do. We see what happens with Brian Kemp is that he's got a big incumbency advantage. He's had the advantage of being in office for four years and being able to deliver to the people of Georgia. And that's a quite different strategic situation for communicating with voters than promises and critiques about that election and about what one would do. So the question about him being the incumbent with a record to run on and that it’s simply a rematch from four years ago, makes this a quite different kind of race than we see with Warnock versus Walker. When we're looking at Warnock, we see both that he had a very tight race both in terms of the general election in 2020, as well as in the runoff. So that means that you've got a runoff candidate versus a political newcomer with baggage. And this is just two quite different dynamics.

REICHARD: We’ve been talking with Professor Peter Wielhouwer at Western Michigan University. Professor, thanks so much!

WIELHOUWER: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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