It was the last act of the midterm elections in the United States. After a tight ballot, Democrat Raphael Warnock, outgoing senator, won on Tuesday, December 6, with 50.7% of the vote against a candidate supported by Donald Trump, the former American football player Herschel Walker. It is a victory for President Joe Biden who thus sees the Democratic camp strengthening his majority in the Senate, to 51 seats against 49 for the Republicans.
The two candidates had already clashed in November but none having obtained more than 50% of the votes, a second round was organized to decide between them, in accordance with electoral law in this southern state of the United States.
“The eyes of the nation are on you”had pleaded before the Joe Biden election, calling on voters in this state with a large African-American population to go to the polls in large numbers.
This victory will allow the Democratic camp to exercise greater influence in key parliamentary committees of the Senate. It also significantly limits the influence of a moderate Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, gravedigger of several major projects of the Biden administration.
Obama to the rescue
To realize their ambitions, the Democrats had called on their heavyweights to the rescue. Former President Barack Obama, arguably one of the party’s most charismatic figures, was campaigning in Atlanta last week.
A sign of the importance and interest in this duel: nearly 400 million dollars (382 million euros) were injected into the ballot, the most expensive of the mid-term elections.
Historically won over to Republicans, Georgia took America by surprise by preferring Joe Biden to Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, then sending two Democrats to the Senate two months later.
With several athletic records to his credit, Republican Herschel Walker, considered one of the greatest players in college football history, entered politics late in life.
The 60-year-old thought he would succeed in seizing the seat of Raphael Warnock, who, before becoming a Georgia senator in 2021, served as a pastor from Martin Luther King’s former desk in Atlanta.
The campaign of the pro-Trump African-American candidate, however, has been splashed by several scandals. Herschel Walker, known for his anti-abortion positions, has among other things been accused of having pushed several of his former companions to have abortions.