Herschel Walker's Runoff Problem

On Georgia Senate

What does a Herschel Walker win look like?

I’m not asking (yet) about coalitions or vote shares or county benchmarks or anything like that, I’m actually just talking about the simple mechanics of Georgia election law. Under said law, there are four outcomes to a statewide election – Democratic win outright, Democratic win in a runoff, GOP win in a runoff, and GOP win outright. This isn’t to say that all four of those outcomes are equally likely – that’s almost never going to be the case – but there are four definitive ways that a Georgia election ends. And the problem for Herschel Walker is I have no idea how he wins, given that.

Walker’s position in the Peach State is (allegedly) buoyed by Emerson and Trafalgar showing him up over Raphael Warnock on Tuesday, and now there’s concern trolling from morons in the commentariat about What It All Means. The answer is “probably nothing” – Emerson and Trafalgar are not good enough pollsters that you should move your priors for them – but there’s now Discourse around this race, so let’s walk through this.

Can Herschel Walker win outright? Potentially, but there’s no evidence he can – 4% of Georgians wanted to vote for a third party in Emerson, even in Trafalgar he’s only at 48%, and on average he’s in the low 40s. Yes, undecideds will split, and white undecideds will break more heavily to him, but a runoff-proof lead is generally in the 2%-4% range, given the need for your lead to be over the % of the minor party vote. In 2020, the Libertarians got 2.4%, in 2018 they got 1%. Expecting a similarly low 1% seems unlikely, but there isn’t a huge legacy of third party votes in the state, so who knows.

Herschel is currently losing, which doesn’t help in that goal, and Georgia polls have been historically much better for Democrats than northern state polls, but in theory Walker’s deficit is small enough that he could narrowly get ahead. The range of outcomes, even if they’re conceded to be wide enough to get him ahead, are not wide enough to get him ahead enough that he’s likely to be above 50%.

Okay, so if it’s unlikely he wins outright, then what about a runoff? I mean, 2020 exists – and that was a situation where Democrats outperformed by 3% from regular election performance to runoff performance, because of the coalitions. The GOP have traded high propensity voters for low propensity voters, a good trade nationally in Presidential elections and a very bad one in runoffs in the south, because Democrats now do better with the most important two constituencies in the state – Blacks and degree-holding whites – and they’re the two groups likeliest to turn out for a Senate runoff.

Like, Herschel’s pretty close to fucked in a runoff, because Democrats are favoured in runoffs – and honestly, if David Perdue couldn’t win the runoff when he literally got 49.7% of the vote in November, it’s hard to see Walker doing it if he manages 48% on November 8th. It’s not impossible, in theory, that the old runoff pattern could emerge, or that Black voters decide that voting for the Black Reverend is too much work … actually no, it is pretty close to impossible to see a situation where Democrats don’t turn out for Warnock if it goes to a runoff.

If you think Democrats have turned out in these special elections post-Dobbs, and that their differential turnout is insane, then wait till you fucking see Democrats in Georgia have another chance to flex their muscles, highly trained over the last 5 years. If you think Herschel is anything other than a substantial underdog in that runoff, you missed all of the memos from 2020 and 2021.

I guess the other way the runoffs could get worse for Democrats would be suburban reversion, but, uh, have you see degree-holding whites post-Dobbs? The chances that that actually meaningfully happens was always fairly slim, but the idea that the social liberals who are making Georgia trend blue are suddenly going to shift back right in an era where the GOP are taking away key freedoms is fanciful, to say the least.

If you want commentary on Emerson, I guess it starts with the fact that Herschel is allegedly getting 25% of the Black vote and is only at 44% statewide, which is … uh, not going to happen. Like, we did this in 2020 – polls showing Republicans getting ~20% of the Black vote were a dime a dozen, and they were all wrong. What some of those polls also got wrong was Democratic strength with whites, which is also what Emerson did, with Raphael Warnock getting 33% of the white vote. For those who do not have the encyclopedic (or deranged, your mileage may vary) memory for the useless and inane Georgia facts, Jon Ossoff won with 27% of the white vote in 2021 and Stacey Abrams lost by 1.4% in 2018 with 25% of the white vote.

Yes, that 33% is almost assuredly high, but Fox had him at 32% last month, and it’s also hard to say it’s likely too high given that, when comparing polled vote share to elections, there are undecideds here. If he’s at 33% in the polls, it’s really hard to see the “real” vote share being 26% or lower, because if he’s at 33% of the white vote with undecideds, he’s probably at 34% or 35% after you allocate undecideds, and then you’d have to overshoot the white vote by a huge amount.

Isn’t that exactly what I’m accusing pollsters of doing with the Black vote, though? Of course, but we know they do this – hell, we know Emerson themselves do this, because they had David Perdue getting 20% of the Black vote in December 2020. This analysis failed me very notably in Texas in 2020, because of the huge Hispanic shift that the polls suggested, and I entirely dismissed, but in Georgia, it worked. Democrats won because Biden did better with whites than Abrams, and even with a whiter electorate than 2018, they got enough swing with whites to flip the state. I’m perfectly fine betting on Black voters reliably voting 90/10 for Democrats, especially in Georgia. If it bites me, I don’t give a fuck. It won’t.

Herschel Walker is repellent to the Romney-Biden, and even Kemp-Biden, voters who populate the north Atlanta suburbs and exurbs – an unrepentant abuser, a father to a number of secret kids, a man whose intellectual capacity leaves much to be desired, and is plainly just fucking not a good fit for Forsyth and the blood red exurbs. His shambolicness, his incoherence, his capacity to start a sentence and end up in a different zip code by the end of it is a particularly bad fit for the lovers of competence and class that is the rich, white areas of north Atlanta. (None of this is meant as an overt or implicit comment on these areas being racist – Warnock outran Ossoff in Forsyth, and I expect Warnock to do quite well in the educated parts of the suburbs and exurbs.)

Given that, then the GOP need rural white turnout to be 2020-levels relative to the state as a whole, which means either huge rural white turnout, or Black turnout being way down, which I don’t see with Stacey and Warnock on the ticket together. The only other path at that point would be flipping 5-10% of the Black electorate, but the problem with that is the idea that a Black Republican will just substantially outrun fundamentals is an idea only really shared by white people who don’t understand the Black community or the role of the Black church.

Realistically, Herschel’s best chance is the same as it’s always been – hatred of Biden being enough for some combination of a lot of socially liberal whites swinging back to the GOP and/or Black turnout falling off. I don’t see either of those happening, and I especially don’t see it with the President suddenly more popular now than 6 weeks ago. Could he get more unpopular? Sure. Could gas prices go back up? There’s little indication in wholesale gas contracts for October that they will, but if there’s a bad hurricane, it’s possible.

Georgia will never give Democrats the 9 point polling leads that an Arizona or a Pennsylvania will, but their winning strategy is super simple – 27%+ of the white vote, 90% of the Black vote, and 30% of the electorate being Black. For what any of the polling is worth, Warnock looks to be in good shape to hit 27%+ of the white vote, and I see no reason to think that an all-Black duo at the top of the Democratic ticket won’t deliver the Black turnout, and margins, necessary to win the state.

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But I don’t see how Herschel gets above 50% in November, and if it goes to a runoff, Democrats are favoured, regardless of what happens in the first round. If you’re asking me whether or not Herschel can win on the first ballot, sure - but I don’t see how the runoffs don’t end the same way even if he does. And frankly, trusting Black Georgia and the Georgia Democratic Party saved my ass in 2020 and 2021, and I see no reason to waver from that.