A new poll shows that Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Georgia) lead over his 2022 midterm challenger, former football player and Trump-endorsed Republican Herschel Walker, has widened by a double-digit margin. Notably, the vast majority of the poll’s respondents were surveyed before a report shedding light on Walker’s hypocrisy on abortion was published earlier this week.
According to a SurveyUSA poll conducted from September 30 to October 4, 50 percent of Georgia voters want Warnock to retain his seat in the Senate, while just 38 percent of voters say they want Walker to win instead.
This is a considerable split compared to other polls — per an aggregate of surveys collected by RealClearPolitics, Warnock only leads Walker by about 3.8 points on average.
It’s unclear if this new poll is an outlier or demonstrative of how the race is now trending. It’s also unclear if the numbers remain accurate, as 95 percent of respondents in the SurveyUSA poll were surveyed before news broke on Monday that Walker allegedly paid for a former girlfriend’s abortion 13 years ago.
The Daily Beast reported on Monday that Walker had paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. The report included proof in the form of the woman’s receipt for the procedure, along with a get-well card and a copy of the check from Walker.
Abortion — a safe and routine medical procedure and a globally recognized human right — should not be considered scandulous in of itself. But Walker is ardently anti-abortion, and has called for a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the pregnant person — situations that he has derogatorily described as “excuses” people use to justify undergoing the procedure. Abortion is currently banned in Georgia after six weeks of pregnancy, though the state allowed abortions in most cases before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year.
Walker has denied the reporting, calling it a “Democrat attack” against him. He vowed to file a defamation lawsuit the morning after the report was published, but several days later, it appears that no such lawsuit has been filed.
Walker’s son, a conservative influencer, has condemned his father’s hypocrisy on social media, telling his followers that he and his family were physically abused by the ex-NFL player back when he was a child.
“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability,” Christian Walker wrote on Twitter. “But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.”
The scandal has already had a significant impact on Walker’s campaign. Former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Walker in the primaries, is now steering clear from campaigning with the candidate in the final weeks of the election season.
According to a CNN report that cited sources close to Trump, the former president is reluctant to campaign with Walker because he believes more allegations against the candidate will emerge soon. Trump is reportedly waiting for those news stories to drop before deciding whether or not to appear with Walker again ahead of the November 8 election.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy