It is no secret Walker’s struggling campaign has frustrated the GOP, which sent seasoned campaign advisors to help him in early July, and now an Emerson College poll shows Walker leading Sen. Raphael Warnock 46%-44%.
But is the NFL great going to defeat an incumbent senator and steal a seat for the Republican Party in the 50-50 senate? It’s politics, so no one really knows.
Back in an August 3 story, AFN reported Warnock was leading Walker by 4% when Real Clear Politics averaged five election polls. Now, six weeks later, the latest RCP average reads “Tie” after the political website averaged four polls. One of those is the Emerson poll, and the other two show Walker ahead, too, but those slight leads are busted by a Quinnipiac poll that shows Warnock leading 52%-46%. RCP averaged the polls at 46.8%-46.8%.
Timothy Head, executive director of the Georgia-based Faith and Freedom Coalition, tells AFN he remains “very optimistic” about a Walker win in November. One reason is the candidate’s name recognition, he says, but there is another reason, too.
“When you've spent at this point almost $30 million trying to defame and really sully the reputation of Hershel Walker, and it's still a tie 60 days out,” Head says, “I would say that's a bit problematic for an incumbent who already is in office and himself has a very lucrative war chest at his disposal."
Warnock, in fact, has made headlines over the summer for setting fundraising records that are leading both Republican and Democrat incumbents across the country. His second-quarter report showed more than double the campaign cash - $17.2 million versus $6.2 million – that Walker’s struggling campaign was bringing in.
And yet Walker could still pull of a win.
One key number in the Emerson poll, which will not go unnoticed by either senate campaign, is that 7% of voters surveyed said they remain undecided.
Head predicts the race will be a close finish, “but I actually like the chances of Herschel being able to pull this thing off over Warnock,” he says.
