The 2022 United States Senate election in Georgia was held on November 8, 2022, to elect a member of the U.S. Senate to represent the state of Georgia. Incumbent Democratic senator Raphael Warnock won his first full term in office, defeating Republican former football player Herschel Walker. Under Georgia's two-round system, Warnock was re-elected in a runoff election on December 6 after neither candidate received over 50% of the vote on November 8. Warnock's win was the only statewide victory for Democrats in Georgia in 2022.
Warnock, who won a shortened term to the seat in a 2020âÂÂ21 special election, was nominated in the May 24 primary for a full term with minimal opposition. Walker, who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, won the Republican nomination with 68% of the vote. It was the first U.S. Senate election in Georgia history and among five nationwide since the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 in which both major party nominees were Black.
In the November 8 election, Warnock received 49.4% of the vote and Walker received 48.5%, triggering the December 6 runoff. Warnock defeated Walker by a 2.8% margin in the runoff and became the first African-American from Georgia elected to a full term in the U.S. Senate, and the first Democrat to win a full term at this seat since Wyche Fowler in 1986. Warnock's victory also secured an outright majority for Senate Democrats for the first time since 2015, with a net gain of one seat in the 2022 midterms. This was the first time since 1998 that Georgia voted for different parties for U.S. senator and governor in the same election cycle. It was the third-closest Senate election of the 2022 midterms after Nevada and Wisconsin. Walker would later go on to be nominated as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas following Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election.
Warnock easily won renomination in the Democratic primary over Tamara Johnson-Shealey, a left-wing activist and businesswoman, who ran a low-profile campaign focused around reparations for slavery.
Graphical summary<br />
Aggregate polls<br />
Primary runoff polling<br /> Doug Collins vs. Kelly Loeffler<br />
Herschel Walker vs. Doug Collins<br />
Herschel Walker vs. Kelly Loeffler<br />
Aggregate polls<br />
Graphical summary<br />
Raphael Warnock vs. Gary Black<br />
Raphael Warnock vs. Kelly Loeffler<br />
Raphael Warnock vs. Doug Collins<br />
Generic Democrat vs. generic Republican<br />
Despite a strong gubernatorial performance by incumbent governor Brian Kemp in his reelection bid, and leading the polls since October, Walker ended up one point behind Warnock and was forced into a runoff. Ticket splitting was evident, as Walker underperformed Brian Kemp by 203,130 votes, while Warnock did 132,444 votes better than Abrams.
Walker won nine of 14 congressional districts.
Voter demographic data for 2022 was collected by CNN. The voter survey is based on exit polls completed by voters in person as well as by phone. One key to Warnock's victory was winning voters with graduate degrees 60-38%, as he lost all other educational groups. Warnock also won voters under 50 by large margins, offsetting his losses among older voters.
Following the projection of incumbent Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto's victory in Nevada, it became clear that, unlike in the previous cycle, the results of the Georgia runoff would not determine control of the United States Senate. With all Democratic incumbents besides Warnock winning re-election and Democrat John Fetterman flipping an open seat in Pennsylvania that had been held by retiring Republican Pat Toomey, Democrats held their majority in the Senate. Nevertheless, national Democrats and Republicans began spending on advertising and volunteer mobilization efforts as soon as it became apparent that a runoff election would be necessary. Historically, runoff elections in Georgia have favored Republicans as turnout decreased disproportionately amongst Democratic voters, but in 2021, with Senate control to be determined, turnout was historically high, and Democrats won both races. Prior to the runoff, elections analysts questioned whether Georgia voters would turn out in such high numbers again and tried to determine which candidate's coalition of supporters would be more likely to turn out. This was the fifth runoff in the state's history.
The early vote window was shorter in 2022 than in 2021 due to Georgia's Election Integrity Act of 2021, which reduced the gap between general and runoff elections from nine to four weeks. State officials also said that there could be no weekend early voting: Georgia state law bars early voting from taking place the Saturday immediately before an election (December 3), and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger argued that early voting also could not take place the next preceding Saturday (November 26), as it fell two days after Thanksgiving (November 24) and the day after a Georgia state holiday established to commemorate Confederate general Robert E. Lee's birthday (November 25). On Friday, November 18, a Fulton County Superior Court judge ruled that, despite the holidays, county boards of election could legally offer early voting on Saturday, November 26; that decision was upheld by the Georgia Court of Appeals on Monday, November 21, and by the Supreme Court of Georgia on Wednesday, November 23. Ultimately, 27 of Georgia's 159 counties chose to offer early voting on Saturday, including the state's four largest counties, Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb.
While Democrats retained control of the Senate during the 118th Congress regardless of the outcome of the Georgia runoff, Warnock's victory affected the functioning of that majority. During the 117th Congress, Senate Democrats made power-sharing agreements with Republicans, such as evenly dividing committee memberships between the two parties and giving Republicans greater ability to delay judicial appointments; with Warnock's win, Democrats attained an outright 51âÂÂ49 majority, allowing them to take full control of Senate committees and expedite judicial confirmations. Looking beyond the 118th Congress, many analysts had noted that the outcome of this race would affect Democrats' prospects in the 2024 U.S. Senate elections. Election forecasters had noted that Democrats held a number of seats up for election in 2024 which would be difficult for the party to defend, and therefore that holding Georgia's seat bolstered the party's chances to maintain Senate control going forward.
According to Ron Brownstein of CNN in 2023, Warnock won independent voters by double-digit margins, which contributed to Walker's defeat.
Aggregate polls<br />
Graphical summary<br />
Warnock won Washington and Baldwin counties in the runoff, after having lost them in the general election, although he did win them in 2020.
Despite losing the state, Walker won nine of 14 congressional districts.
Partisan clients<br />
Official campaign websites