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Melissa Harris-Perry: Hey, y'all. Welcome to The Takeaway. You're with me, Melissa Harris-Perry. Let's head on down to Georgia.

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Speaker 2: Georgia did an amazing thing. In 2021, it sent its first African American senator and its first Jewish senator to the United States Senate [unintelligible 00:00:25] You have done it again. Thank you, Georgia.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now after four more weeks of campaigning and tens of millions more dollars in advertising, the last Senate seat has been decided. Incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker with just over 51% of the vote. This long and hard US Senate race has proven to be the most expensive of the 2022 midterm cycle. Voters had a minimum of five early voting days last week. After a lawsuit, some counties in Georgia even opened precincts for Saturday voting after Thanksgiving, which means by Tuesday more than 1.8 million voters in Georgia had already cast their ballots through early voting or mail-in.

For some folks, there's just nothing like casting your ballot in person on election day. Now let me let you know, one of the great things about Team Takeaway is that even though our home station is WNYC in New York City, many of us live in different places across the country. Our digital producer Zachary Bynum is a Georgia man. He went out to vote yesterday in Savannah during his lunch hour.

Zachary Bynum: I just left the polling place. I am the 336 of voter at that polling location today, which is really cool. It's been a pretty successful voting experience. I got my I-voted sticker. Democracy is happening.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We love to see you, Zach. For more on the election results, joining me now is Stephen Fowler reporter for GPB News covering state and local politics and host of Battleground: Ballot Box podcast. Stephen, welcome back to The Takeaway.

Stephen Fowler: Always a pleasure.

Melissa Harris-Perry: First of all, are you exhausted?

Stephen Fowler: It does feel like a light at the end of the tunnel is maybe like a spotlight at this point because this is the first time in-- It feels two years there is no election in Georgia.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Listen, now you were at Senator Warnock's election night event last night. Were supporters riding the rollercoaster the early him being way ahead and then the back and forth between Walker and Warnock around the- I guess it was like 9930 hour. Was there an emotional wave also moving through?

Stephen Fowler: It was basically an upbeat party from the beginning, Melissa. Part of it is because the optimism that supporters of Warnock had, part of it was looking at some of the math even though the results were coming in and things were neck and neck back and forth, yin and yang. The big counties that hadn't delivered a lot of their votes yet were heavily democratic counties like DeKalb County and Fulton County where Atlanta is.

A lot of people there felt like they knew it was coming. It really was more like a party party than an election night watch party. There was a DJ, the mayor of Atlanta came up to some young Jeezy and left to some ludicrous. The people were swag surfing. It was basically like a homecoming reunion party more than a watch CNN as votes come in party.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Why do I feel that might have also been going on at the Biden White House last night? Now they've got 51 votes in the US Senate.

Stephen Fowler: Because it's more than about who represents Georgia for the next six years. Even though that was a big pitch for Raphael Warnock about who's going to represent Georgia for the next six years, there is the larger piece at stake much less relevant now both Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two moderate Democrats that played an obstructionist role with democratic policies because Democrats now controlled the Senate outright.

They don't need the Vice President as a tie-breaking vote. Especially with the house flipping to Republican control by a narrow margin having Warnock as that 51st vote means that judicial confirmations can go smoother. The committees are no longer evenly divided. Even though I just said there's no election in Georgia, looking ahead to 2024 that's one more seat for Democrats to have for a map that might not be as favorable for them as ended up this time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The language of control of the Senate is always a tricky one in this moment where so much operates basically always on this 60-vote fake filibuster moment. It is true as you point out, the judicial appointments in particular a critical one that only needs simple majority.

Stephen Fowler: It's something that was conveyed a lot I think in a lot of national coverage of the race. A lot of national outside Democrats were emphasizing the importance. What we saw in Georgia on the ground was Warnock very laser-focused on the time that he spent in office so far and making the race as he said about character and competency because walking through the streets of Atlanta or going out in different parts of the state and talking to voters, you're not going to find people very much that are like, "Ah, yes, I can't wait to have stronger judicial confirmation processes."

It's just this overall vibe because Georgia has had such this important role that this race even though it didn't decide control of the Senate felt like it was more important in higher stakes than those 2021 runoffs where Ossoff and Warnock won.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love only in my political science nerdy dreams do people walk the streets with enthusiasm about senate confirmation hearings. Someday we could dream. I am really interested in this moment though. There was a very strong turnout here for this runoff, but it was still a little down from the general election as would be expected. I'm wondering if you've had a chance to look enough at the map yet to figure out was this win like big enthusiasm pro-Warnock or maybe just a little less enthusiasm in this runoff by Republican voters for Walker?

Stephen Fowler: The short answer is yes both. What we saw generally across the board is that Raphael Warnock lost Republican counties a little bit less than he lost them in November. He won Democrat counties a little bit more than the democratic county margins that he got in November. With Georgia being so razor thin lately, that was enough to ultimately get to the roughly 2.8% margin that we saw here.

If you looked in different geographies of the state, it also tells the story. There was very strong Black turnout during the early voting period. Even though it was only five mandatory days and a few optional days and bigger counties, the Black turnout during early vote was 3% higher than it was in the general election. Because of voting patterns in the South in particular, that basically delivered 3% more votes for Warnock given the split of how Black voters cast their ballots.

If you look in some of Atlanta suburbs where there's more moderate white suburban voters, they voted for Herschel Walker a little bit less than some of the other Republican candidates in November indicated that they were not on board with Herschel Walker to them they weren't going to hold their nose and vote for a candidate they found was flawed and really reflects what we saw in the general election where one in 10 Republican voters supported Republican governor Brian Kemp and his reelection did but didn't vote for Herschel Walker. All of these factors are at play little piece here little piece there. That's how you had a roughly 90,000-vote victory after nobody clearing 50% the first time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's the kind of thing I just feel like data scientists are going to love to be able to figure out exactly what difference it makes to be having this runoff versus running when all of the other folks are on the ticket. Folks who showed up to vote for the governor and then either held their nose or didn't to vote for Walker but didn't make the time to come back out this time. There's another number that I feel like folks are going to be looking at, and that is that ad spending.

I think obviously there's one way to talk about that in terms of how much was spent on the campaign but maybe because I'm a media person, I am fascinated by the idea that this has been really good for local TV stations. It has made them financially solve it 232 million for one station over less than two years. Should everybody be having runoffs?

Stephen Fowler: If only people gave that much to their local member stations then we could have more takeaway bureaus all across the country. It is just a stunning amount of money that has been poured into Georgia from the political ad spending for local TV stations that have been having to add newscasts to be able to play all of the advertisements that they're getting. Along with that, there has been more attention thankfully in the media in Georgia and the reporting in Georgia and what goes on beyond the top-line national story that leads things. From a media perspective, I think us reporters in Georgia are happy. There's all this attention because A, it's job security, but B, it's reinvigorated people both in Georgia and beyond paying attention to things. It really has just created this unprecedented market where you're getting mailers every day from multiple groups, both sides of the aisle.

You get more texts and calls from political groups than friends and family. The TV, you can't turn on the TV, you can't turn on Hulu, you can't do anything without candidates doing it. Actually, instead of more places doing runoffs, it's actually a motivating push by some groups on both sides of the aisle to say, "Enough is enough. We don't want runoffs four weeks, nine weeks, no weeks. We're done with it."

Melissa Harris-Perry: What's next? Are we going to see an invigorated democratic party in Georgia, or will we see a Republican party that's like, "Oh, no, this is unacceptable two Democrats representing the state in the US Senate in such a purple state. We have got to bring ourselves some really strong candidates next time."?

Stephen Fowler: It's interesting, Melissa, because Georgia is a lot like the rest of the country right now in that both of the parties are doing a little bit of soul-searching about what comes next for them. Democrats came very, very close in 2018 with the governor's race and other statewide races. They flipped the votes for the White House in 2020, elected two Democratic senators in 2021 runoffs, and now reelected Warnock in 2022. In the general election, they suffered relative blowouts.

Stacy Abrams lost by a large margin, as did the rest of the state-wide slate. They're trying to figure out and recalculate their message and recalibrate because they clearly don't have a problem turning out voters. It's just a question of persuading enough voters to vote for them. At the same time, even though Republicans won big, that was in spite of the state party apparatus who encouraged Trump-backed primary challengers to popular incumbents who lost the seat that really could have been winnable elsewhere. Even though both sides have very things to be very happy about in November and December, there's a lot of soul-searching heading into 2024. I think that's appropriate to say it's happening across the country, too.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Stephen Fowler is a reporter for GPB News Covering State and Local Politics. He's also host of the Battleground: Ballot Box podcast. Stephen, come on back anytime. Thanks for being here.

Stephen Fowler: Thanks for having me.

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