Walker and Warnock go head-to-head in battle for the final Senate seat trends now

On Tuesday the last outstanding Senate race will be decided in a run-off election between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican ex-NFL star Herschel Walker.

In the general election, Warnock finished just ahead of his GOP challenger, 1,943,737 votes to 1,907,272 votes, or 0.9 percent. But thanks to a third-party challenger neither candidate was able to breach the 50 percent threshold and so the top two finishers compete again, per Georgia's election law.

According to the latest polling Warnock is still running ahead - 52 to 48 percent according to the latest CNN poll.  

Peach State residents have now endured another excruciating month of mud-slinging campaign ads to flood their airwaves as each candidate trades dirt on the other.

The race has been focused on two things - each candidate tying the other to their party's national leaders and moral character attacks, with each shedding light on the other's dicey history.

For Warnock, that means framing Walker as a fundamentally unserious Trump acolyte, and letting a slew of accusations relating to domestic violence and paying for abortions speak for themselves. For Walker, that means framing his opponent as too liberal for Georgia and tying him to President Biden's agenda, which he blames for 40-year-high inflation, and going after his church's murky charity operation.

Here's what to know about the race:

Early voting turnout has been high, though likely won't surpass 2021

Already more than 1.8 million have cast their ballots, either in person or absentee, during early voting. 

That total surpassed those who cast ballots in runoffs in 2018 and 2016, the state data shows, though likely won't surpass the ballots cast in 2021, when Warnock was locked in a race with then-GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff was taking on then- Sen. David Perdue. 

Those races were to decide the fate of control in the Senate, while this year Democrats already hold the upper hand with 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaker. 

But the high turnout comes despite outcry over a 2021 election security bill signed by Gov. Brian Kemp that shrank the early voting timeframe from a minimum of 17 days to a minimum of five. 

Who is Herschel Walker? The ex-NFL player and former University of Georgia star who Republicans at first kept their distance from

Walker was raised in Wrightsville, Georgia, a rural town of 2,000 people, the son of a Pentecostal pastor and one of seven. He quickly became the star of his high school football team. 

His talent garnered him a spot on the University of Georgia football team, where he won a Heisman Trophy. He never graduated from the school, though he's claimed otherwise, as he was scouted by the United States Football League and later the NFL. 

Outside of football, Walker was also a member of the U.S. bobsled team at the 1992 Winter Olympics and from 2019-2020 served in the Trump administration as co-chair of the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. 

The 60-year-old spent 20 years living in Texas before moving to the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta when he announced his campaign. He has at least four children with four different women. 

Walker has spoken publicly about being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and has advocated for mental health awareness. In 2008 he wrote a book about his diagnosis, Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder, where he revealed he has a dozen different alternative personalities. 

Who is Raphael Warnock? The Atlanta-area pastor vying for his first full term as senator 

Born in Savannah, Georgia, Warnock often tells of how he grew up in public housing, the second-youngest of two Pentecostal pastors. 

After graduating Morehouse College and Union Theological Seminary, Warnock eventually became a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, which previously counted Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rep. John Lewis among its members.

Warnock has two children with his ex-wife who he was married to from 2016 until they separated in 2019.  

Warnock, along with Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the Peach State since 2000 in a 2021 runoff. Now less than two years later he is forced to defend his seat and vie for his first full term in the Senate. 

The candidates make an appeal to the Bible-thumping Deep South with differing religious and social justice messages 

Both men were raised in the black church in the Deep South at the height of the civil rights movement and center their public persona on faith, while knocking the other in moral terms on matters like abortion, race, criminal justice and personal behaviors. 

Warnock calls himself a 'pastor in the Senate' and has said voting is a kind of prayer. 

Warnock, 53, often preaches a social justice-focused Christianity, quick to point out the black church's roots in slavery and Jim Crow  and talk about matters like institutional racism and call for government to step in and address inequities. He has a long history of preaching against racism from the pulpit. 

'We don't like to talk about it in America. But you can't heal a disease without a diagnosis. Without a diagnosis, there's no prescription.' Still, he urged: 'Don't give up on America.' 

Walker, meanwhile, has suggested Warnock's focus on racism shows that he is not patriotic.

'Sen. Warnock believes America is a bad country full of racist people; I believe we're a great country full of generous people,' Walker declared in an ad in September. 

Walker has said he has 'dealt with racism my whole life,' but told Axios in April how as a budding football star he was urged to join civil rights protests but decided against it. 

'Why don’t he get out of racism and learn redemption? Learn forgiveness. Learn to move on,' Walker said of Warnock in a November Fox News interview. 

Still, he points to society's shortcomings, particularly the expansion of LGBTQ rights, a renewed focus on racism and 'weak' politicians who 'don't love this country.' 

Walker's faith references have focused largely on redemption, a message he hoped would resonate given the scandals he's been caught up in in the past. 

'Let me acknowledge my Lord and savior Jesus Christ, because it's said if you don't acknowledge him, he won't acknowledge you,' Walker said at his only debate with Warnock. 'When I come knocking, I want him to let me in.' 

After accusations he tried to kill his ex-wife, Walker has said he is a new man cured of his mental illness and 'redeemed by the grace of God.' 

Who's likely to have the upper hand in a run-off? 

Over the past quarter century, Democrats in Georgia have almost always performed more poorly in runoff elections than they did in a general election. This could be because once the Libertarian candidate is out of the running, more of those votes go to the Republican. 

That changed in 2020, when Democrats outperformed their general election results in the runoff, with Warnock and Ossoff beating out GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. 

But the logistics of the 2022 runoff are different than 2021, after the GOP-controlled Georgia legislature enacted an electoral overhaul last year. The time between the general election and the runoff was shortened from nine weeks to four, early voting is restricted and it is essentially impossible to register new voters during that period, a tactic Democrats heavily relied on in 2021.   

Some worry that if former President Trump announces a run in that period it will turn the election into a referendum on him. Even his White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany urged him against it: 'I think he needs to put it on pause, absolutely,' she said this week. 

Trump is expected to launch his 2024 campaign on Tuesday, having teased a 'major announcement' at Mar-a-Lago for Nov. 15. 

Walker's dicey past:

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