Warnock leading Walker by 5 points in new poll

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is leading Republican challenger Herschel Walker by five points in the Georgia Senate race, according to a Marist poll released Tuesday.

The poll found 47 percent of registered voters surveyed support Warnock compared to Walker’s 42 percent.

Among registered voters who reported they definitely plan to vote in the November midterms, Warnock’s lead was smaller, with 47 percent of that group supporting Warnock compared to 45 percent for Walker.

These findings contrast with those of a poll released Tuesday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that found former NFL star Walker ahead of Warnock by 2 points.

Warnock’s 2-point lead among those who say they definitely plan to vote in November in the Marist poll and Walker’s 2-point lead in the Journal-Constitution poll are both within the respective polls’ margins of error, highlighting the tight race.

If neither candidate grabs 50 percent of the Georgia vote, the race will move to a runoff election.

Warnock won the Senate seat in January 2021 in a runoff special election against then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R).

Eighty-seven percent of Democrats surveyed in the Marist poll and 12 percent of Republicans said they had a favorable view of Warnock. By contrast, 11 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans said they had a favorable view of Walker.

The Marist poll was conducted Sept. 12-15 and surveyed 1,322 Georgia adults, with an overall margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. Among those adults, 1,202 were registered voters and 992 were registered voters definitely planning to vote in the midterms. The margins of error were 3.6 percentage points and 4 percentage points for those subgroups, respectively.

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