Georgia Poll: Herschel Walker Leads Raphael Warnock in Tight Senate Battle

Republican Herschel Walker has taken a two-point lead over incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in the race for U.S. Senate in Georgia, according to a poll published Tuesday.

The poll, taken by the Trafalgar Group and the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, found Walker at 49 percent and Warnock at 47 percent, while third-party candidate Chase Oliver came in at five percent.

The poll was conducted October 21 to October 23 and is the first to show Walker with an edge over Warnock after left-leaning media ramped up attacks on Walker related to his personal life earlier in the month.

Walker told Breitbart News on Saturday of the negative media reports, “I think they really gave momentum to myself. They gave momentum to the campaign. I think people are now starting to become aware that the lies that Sen. Warnock and the media’s telling, they know it’s not true.”

Walker, a University of Georgia football legend and former NFL player, has indeed seen his campaign pick up momentum. The Georgia Republican banked record fundraising contributions as his name made headlines in unfriendly outlets such as the Daily Beast and New York Times at the start of October, and most polls, including this latest one, taken since the media blitz indicate the candidates are in a dead heat two weeks out from election day.

Walker also appeared to surprise some left-leaning pundits by outperforming Warnock in the state’s sole U.S. Senate debate between the two candidates on October 14. During the debate, Walker repeatedly hammered Warnock for talking “nice” and “sweet” while voting in lockstep with President Joe Biden, who is deeply unpopular in Georgia.

Warnock, a longtime pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, has also taken heat from media this month. A report by the Washington Free Beacon on October 11 revealed Warnock’s church had moved to evict several low-income tenants in the past two years amid Warnock advocating for an eviction moratorium in Congress and collecting his own cushy housing stipend from the church.

Warnock in the debate vaguely denied that his church evicted the tenants despite the Free Beacon publishing legal documents indicating eviction processes had been initiated. Warnock’s response led the far-left mayor of South Fulton, Georgia, Khalid Kamau, to criticize Warnock.

“It made me a little queasy,” Kamau said of Warnock’s debate explanation.

The poll published Tuesday also included crosstabs that showed Walker with more than 20 percent support from black voters and Warnock with 71 percent support from the same.

Those figures would be disastrous for Warnock if they panned out in the polls as Warnock needs closer to 90 percent support from black voters, who make up about a third of Georgia’s active electorate, to prevail over Walker based on past elections.

Early voting is already in full swing in Georgia, and early voting numbers indicate enthusiasm for the midterms is at an all-time high.

Secretary of State official Gabriel Sterling revealed Monday that turnout had broken a midterm-year record, as more than 837,000 Georgians had already voted and the state was expected to reach the one-million mark by Tuesday.

The poll was taken among 1,076 likely voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent.