MADRID, Dec. 7 (.) –
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock has prevailed over his Republican opponent and former American football player Herschel Walker in the second round of the midterm legislative elections in the United States for the state of Georgia.
Warnock, with 50.7 percent of the ballots, has obtained this Tuesday 1.4 percent more votes than his opponent, who has reached 49.3 percent. However, in the first round – held on November 8 – Warnock prevailed over Walker by just 0.9 tenths, with neither breaking the necessary threshold of 50 percent to avoid a second round.
The victory of the Democratic senator gives the Democrats an absolute majority in the Senate, with 51 seats compared to 49 for the Republicans, after two years in a tied division for which the vice president, Kamala Harris, and also the speaker of the House Alta, she had had to cast tie-breaking votes.
This additional seat allows Democrats to have majorities in each committee, making it possible to speed up legislative processes, they would gain greater power to issue subpoenas for investigations, and they could fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, where they lack a majority, reports CNN.
The vice president of the country has congratulated the senator after knowing the results. “Georgia voters said they wanted a senator who would fight for them, and they made it happen when they re-elected Warnock to the United States Senate. Congratulations my friend,” Harris wrote on his Twitter account.
More than 1.8 million people have voted early in the second round, breaking previous participation records, according to CBS. The anticipated high turnout in this round has been in Democratic-leaning counties around Atlanta.
Warnock was one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators in the elections, but Walker has turned out to be a weak candidate, with mistakes and contradictions such as rejecting abortion despite discovering that he paid for an abortion to an ex-girlfriend or unconditionally supporting Donald Trump.
Georgia established itself as one of the most competitive states in the 2020 presidential election. Warnock also failed to reach 50 percent in the first round in 2020, so he had to face off again on a special election day two months after the ‘ midterm’.
After the first vote in early November, the current Democratic senator from the State of Georgia acknowledged that the race against the Republican candidate for a seat in the Senate “is too close.”
REPUBLICANS BLAME TRUMP
Republicans are pointing to Walker’s defeat to call on the GOP to remove Donald Trump from leadership for the 2024 election, as the former president endorsed the senatorial candidate.
Iowa Republican Bob Wander Plaats called Walker’s loss “another blow to the former president.” Conservatives across the country are tired of losing. 2024 is key to winning the future again. Let’s choose well”, he has indicated through his Twitter account.
Trump’s team had hoped for a Republican victory in Georgia, while concerns are growing that the anti-Trump movement could build momentum within Republicans, hampering the presidential race, reports CNN.
