Battleground Georgia
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2022
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Georgia, the state that was key to the Democrats taking control of Washington in 2020, could now be responsible for giving some of that power back to Republicans.
In a contentious Senate race, former NFL star Herschel Walker (R) is taking on the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock. Walker, however, is plagued with controversy that’s making it hard for Republicans to throw their support behind him.
A rematch for governor pits incumbent Brian Kemp (R) against his 2018 challenger, Stacey Abrams (D). Abrams’s camp hopes her work to expand ballot access will be enough to get her to victory this time, but Kemp’s incumbent status is giving him the edge.
Democracy reporter Matt Brown explains the state of play in Georgia right now, just as the state has already smashed early-voting records.
Correction: A previous version of this episode mistakenly said Stacey Abrams lost the race for Georgia governor in 2020. She lost that race in 2018.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Early voting in Georgia started this week, and voters there have already shattered records. |
| 0:12.8 | On the first day that people could cast their ballots, more than 135,000 of them showed |
| 0:18.2 | up. |
| 0:19.2 | That's almost double the number that showed up when voting began during the last midterms. |
| 0:24.8 | Georgia is the state that really defined so many of the politics that we're living in now. |
| 0:31.2 | As my colleague Matt Brown reports from his home state, what happens in Georgia is a really |
| 0:36.2 | big deal. |
| 0:37.8 | Both through its upset win with President Biden in 2020, and then with the victory of |
| 0:42.9 | two Democratic senators, that made everything that's happened over the past two years in |
| 0:46.5 | Washington possible for the Democrats. |
| 0:49.2 | Now that hangs in the balance in Georgia, there are two very close races. |
| 0:54.2 | A Senate contest between Republican Herschel Walker and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, |
| 1:00.2 | there's also a rematch between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Governor Brian |
| 1:05.2 | Ken, who wins will all really depend on who turns out to vote in this state that's racially |
| 1:11.3 | diverse and rapidly changing. |
| 1:14.0 | I like saying often that Georgia is emblematic of a lot of the issues that are going on all |
| 1:18.6 | across the country. |
| 1:20.3 | You have everything here in terms of what are the top of mind issues for people, including |
| 1:25.2 | threat to democracy, questions about what type of society we want to live in. |
| 1:29.8 | In such a evenly divided polarized state, when it really just comes down to how we're even |
| 1:35.9 | the ballots counted. |
| 1:39.1 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
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