Just Peachy: Fundraising Skyrockets as Georgia Senate Race Heads to Runoff

The Georgia Senate race is officially heading to a December 6th runoff election and Democrats and Republicans alike are already hard at work fundraising for their respective candidates.

According to data from Fox News, Herschel Walker hauled in $3.3 million in fundraising on the first day of his Senate runoff campaign but that won't be nearly enough if he hopes to beat out Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock this winter.

Georgia secretary of state officials announced on Wednesday that the Senate election was headed to a runoff since no candidate received over 50% of the vote. According to the latest unofficial and incomplete returns, Warnock was at 49.4%, Walker at 48.5% and Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver at 2.1%. 

Under Georgia law, if no candidate tops 50% of the vote in the general election, the two top vote-getters proceed to a runoff, which this cycle is being held four weeks later on Dec. 6.

The pressure is on for Walker to defeat his Democrat opponent in a race that could easily determine control of the Senate but Democrats are playing hardball.

On Thursday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) invested an additional $7 million to fund direct voter contact programs to expand on Warnock's previous organizing effort. 

“We know talking directly to voters through a strong, well-funded ground-game is critical to winning in Georgia, and we're wasting no time in kick-starting these programs in the runoff,” said Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the DSCC chair. 

The release states organizers will emphasize to voters the importance of participating in the runoff and the contrast between Warnock and Walker on the issues, as well as helping Georgians make and complete their plan to vote. 

While fundraising alone won't propel either candidate to victory its clear money will play an influential role in the election. Over the past decades, significant changes to campaign finance laws have led to dramatic shifts in the scale of money in elections. For example, the 2020 U.S. election cycle cost nearly $14 billion in presidential and congressional campaign spending.

The uptick in political spending over decades has sparked examinations into what proportion of U.S. Senate races were won by the candidate that outraised or outspent their opponent and data shows in most cases the more money you have the greater your chance of victory is.

Harvard Political Review delved into the phenomenon last year and found that while special interests and underlying factors like incumbency certainly play a role in a candidate's success, fundraising is still king.

Initial findings from the empirical analysis suggest that there is some evidence to support the notion that money may influence electoral outcomes. In 25 of the 35 (71%) U.S. Senate races during the 2020 election cycle, the candidate that outraised and outspent their opponent won the election; if money had absolutely no influence on election results, one could reasonably expect a proportion closer to a 50-50 split. 

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