Georgia's Senate Race

 The Georgia Senate Race between the Democrat Incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker has been one of the most closely watched races of the 2022 cycle. Mr. Warnock is a pastor of a well-known church in Atlanta who campaigned on his accomplishments since election, as well as “painting himself as a champion of bipartisan problem solving in a gridlocked congress”. Warnock painting himself as a bi-partisan legislator is an example of Down’s Median Voter Theorem: candidates and parties converging to the median voter. Warnock is trying to get as many votes as possible, which means voting for moderate policies or at least doing what he did in the campaign- presenting himself as bi-partisan.

    Additionally, in class, we discussed various voting methods and their advantages and disadvantages. Georgia law mandates a majority rule with runoff, meaning that the winner needs to get 50.1% of the vote. However, in this election, Warnock received 49.4%, Walker 48.5%, and a 3rd candidate, Chase Oliver, a libertarian, received 2.1% of the vote. Because of Oliver’s candidacy, neither Walker nor Warnock were able to reach the majority threshold. Therefore, the election will head to a December 6th runoff between Warnock and Walker. It may be possible that the winner of the runoff will be different under the majority rule with the runoff system than if a plurality rule was used. On December 6th, we may (?) experience first-hand how different electoral rules can produce different winners.