Democratic Sen. Warnock wins Georgia runoff election against Walker

Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in the Senate runoff election yesterday, giving the Democratic Party an outright majority in the U.S. Senate. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, preliminary election results show Warnock winning the election with 1,817,465 votes, or 51.4% of the total vote, to Walker’s 48.6 percent. Walker spoke to a group of supporters last night, saying, “I’m not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight.”

What does this election mean outside of Georgia? With Warnock, Democrats will have an outright majority in the U.S. Senate (51-49)—if Walker had won, they would have had to rely on Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote for passing legislation. Last year, runoff victories in the state gave Democrats an outright majority in the Senate.

Dig deeper: Read Lillian Hamman’s report in Vitals about how Georgia has appealed its heartbeat law to the Supreme Court.​​