more than a dozen states. that includes some of the most critical battlegrounds on the board, pennsylvania, florida, wisconsin, just over the last couple of days, ohio, arizona, and a georgia early voting set to begin this coming monday. it is the peach state where we start tonight with our breaking news. a head to head televised showdown this evening between democratic senator raphael warnock, and his republican challenger, herschel walker. all year, the georgia senate race has been one of the most closely watched in the country, but that has been even more true that ever over the last ten days. it began with that reporting first from the daily beast by the new york times, that walker had pushed for and paid for his then girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009, a charge that walker has denied. since that reporting, this has become the question when it comes to the battle for control of the senate. will it cost walker the voters? if it does, will it cost republicans a seat the
59 minutes, 38 seconds and counting until the first polls close on election night. thank you so much for joining us for this election count down and here is what is going to be happening, every friday night from now until election day we are going to be right here, at this hour at this board, bringing you the latest in polling, the latest data, the latest on the ground reporting and expert analysis as we draw near one of the most anticipated midterm elections in modern memory. that s going to be november the 8th. already, voting started in more than a dozen states. that includes some of the most critical battlegrounds on the board, pennsylvania, florida, wisconsin, just over the last couple of days, ohio, arizona, and a georgia early voting set to begin this coming monday. it is the peach state where we start tonight with our breaking news. a head to head televised showdown this evening between democratic senator raphael warnock, and his republican challenger, herschel walker
walker tonight at his final appearance, at his campaign eve appearance i believe it is going to be, so he s coming into georgia but he will be beamed in, and you know, the walker folks believe that that will help mobilize their core supporter. of course, they re probably doing it at the last minute because they don t also want to mobilize people who don t like trump to come out as well. raphael warnock has had some very strong surrogates. he had barack obama here for a rally last week. that was really well attended. he had dave matthews, stevie wonder, some powerful surrogates on the warnock side. you have some reporting on the turnout so far. yes, republicans are nervous. they calculate that if you just took all of the early votes, warnock is going to win by nine points. but then there s election day. and what does that mean? that means that the republican estimation, that walker needs to win the election day vote by 20 points. that s a lot. now, what was really interesting in the
over 50% in the election. our good friend sahil kapoor has some great reporting that there s more than 77,000 voters who reported not having voted in november because they thought, they assumed warnock would win and are now coming out and voting. and that demographic, you know, there are more asian american, there are more latino, there are more african american, demographically they look a lot more like warnock voters. i think there s a cautious optimism on the warnock side of this. but i think there s a fear. i have to be honest with you. i ve heard from people all over the country who keep saying to me, herschel walker absolutely cannot be a united states senator. there s a certain matter of humiliation in the idea of someone like that being a senator, to be blunt. so you and i are the two that sort of sit there white-knuckled waiting for the results to come in, for kornacki to wave, and i think we both draw on some of the granular knowledge of campaigns.
himself to vote for him. republicans held their nose and november and they are probably going to refuse to do that now when though analysis on the ballots, as pole hochul walker up. remember, he underperformed about 200 plus votes in november. i expect that margin to be realized now that it is just walker and warnock on the ballot. yes we know susan, i ve been having all week right charles and a song the james brown covered called georgia on my wine. i have been really humming that song. what do you think the gop is going to come out of this and what does that mean to the gop? oh i think at this point, the writing is on the law for the gop. it s pretty clear as far as the train, juanita is right. momentum is on warnock side. people do not want to come out and vote for herschel walker. and i think the republicans are going to say well, we will take our lumps here but more importantly, i think one thing for republicans to consider was