Democrat Warnock takes 4-POINT lead over Herschel Walker in Georgia run-off

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has a four-point advantage over Republican Herschel Walker in one of the final polls of the last Senate race to be decided in 2022. 

A CNN survey released Friday found that 52 percent of Georgia likely voters said they were backing Warnock, to 48 percent who said they supported Walker in the December 6 run-off race, in which early voting has already started. 

Nearly all Democrats, 99 percent of those surveyed, said they’re supporting Warnock, with Walker hitting nearly the same highs among Republicans, at 95 percent. 

The small number of Georgians who identified as independents are tilting toward Warnock – 61 to 36 percent. A majority polled, 59 percent, said Walker is not honest and trustworthy. While a slim majority 52 percent, found Warnock – a pastor by trade – honest and trustworthy. 

Warnock got high-profile help Thursday night, with the return of former President Barack Obama. 

Obama gleefully mocked one of Walker’s recent weirder statements. 

‘Since the last time I was here Mr. Walker has been talking about issues that are of great importance to the people of Georgia. Like whether it’s better to be a vampire or a werewolf,’ Obama said. ‘This is a debate that I must confess I once had myself. When I was seven. Then I grew up.’ 

Former President Barack Obama (left) appeared Thursday night in Atlanta to stump for Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock (right), who’s in a run-off race against Republican Herschel Walker

Republican hopeful Herschel Walker speaks at a campaign rally in Columbus, Georgia on Thursday. Former President Donald Trump isn’t expected to appear in the state to bolster Walker’s chances before Tuesday’s run-off election 

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Obama made Georgia a priority this year – picking the Peach State for his first outing on the campaign trail in late October, stumping for Warnock and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams, who lost her race to incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. 

Obama mocked Walker then too – asking the audience to conduct a ‘thought experiment’ about whether they’d let the former Georgia football great and NFL player fly a plane or perform surgery – other areas in which he had no experience.

‘Let’s say you’re at the airport and you see Mr. Walker and you say, ‘Hey, there’s Herschel Walker, Heisman winner, let’s have him fly the plane!” Obama said. ‘You probably wouldn’t say that. You’d probably want to know, ‘Does he know how to fly an airplane?” 

Obama laid out the same idea, but at a hospital. ‘That Walker guy, he sure could tear him up at Sanford stadium, give him a scalpel,’ Obama said to laughs. 

‘And by the way the opposite is true too, you may have liked me as president, but you would not want me starting as tailback for the Dogs,’ Obama continued. ‘Can you imagine my slow, old, skinny behind getting hit by some 300-pound defensive tackle … you’d have to scrape me off the field.’ 

‘No I can’t,’ Obama said. 

The ex-president’s broader argument about the former football player-turned-politician was that there was ‘very little evidence that he has taken any interest, bothered to learn anything about, or displayed any kind of inclination toward public service, or volunteer work or helping people in any way,’ Obama said. 

‘Seems to me he’s a celebrity who wants to be a politician,’ Obama remarked. ‘And we’ve seen how that goes. We’ve seen that before,’ he said, laughing.

President Joe Biden is running out of time to make another swing to the state. 

‘I think the president will go wherever he’s wanted and needed,’ said former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, now a White House official, as she arrived at Thursday night’s state dinner with France. 

She predicted that it was going to be a ‘great night’ for Democrats in Georgia. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, also arriving for the dinner, said he was happy with how the race was going for his party thus far. 

‘People are seeing who he is. They like who he is,’ Schumer said of Warnock, a senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. 

Schumer already has a Senate majority, with the election of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and incumbents Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Mark Kelly in Arizona, with Vice President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaker vote.

But the reelection of Warnock will give him a true majority – with the upper chamber then being split 51-49.  

Former President Donald Trump, who pushed Walker to run for the seat, isn’t expected to make a return visit with just four days left. 

He did make a pitch for Walker at his own 2024 presidential announcement last month.