What to watch in Tuesday's Georgia Senate runoff election

ATLANTA — The extended Senate campaign in Georgia gives Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker a second chance to persuade voters to send them to Washington. But without party control of Congress at stake and absent other candidates on the ticket, the runoff looks different from the November general election.The results of the AP VoteCast survey illustrate some of the challenges each candidate faces on Tuesday. Walker will need to turn out a GOP base that wasn’t enamored with him to start with, and do it without the more popular Gov. Brian Kemp on the ballot. Warnock must get his coalition of some lower-propensity voting groups to turn out.And both candidates have to motivate voters despite a predetermined balance of power in Washington.The wide-ranging VoteCast survey of more than 3,200 midterm voters in the state provides a detailed look at the Warnock and Walker coalitions and the attitudes that defined their choices this year. The data reveals advantages — and disadvantages — for both candidates in the runoff.WHAT’S AT STAKE?Fifty-four percent of Georgia midterm voters said they considered party control of the Senate to be the primary factor in their vote in the general election. But that’s no longer at stake.Democrats flipped a Republican-held Senate seat in Pennsylvania to maintain their thin advantage in the chamber without relying on the outcome in Georgia.In the general, many supporters of both candidates were motivated by party control, and they’ll need to be persuaded to vote a second time around when it doesn’t hang in the balance.It’s a challenge for Walker in particular, whose supporters were slightly more likely than Warnock’s to say control of the Senate was their chief consideration, 57% vs. 52%. A Walker victory in the Senate would keep the 50-50 status quo, but Democrats maintain control with Vice President Kamala Harris ‘ tiebreaking vote.REPUBLICAN SUPPORTWalker benefits from Georgia’s Republican-leaning tendencies, but Kemp didn’t carry Walker when they were both at the top of the ticket four weeks ago. In fact, Walker’s vote tallies fell more than 200,000 short of his fellow Republican’s, which might suggest he has a harder time getting Republicans out for him without Kemp on the ballot.While 7 in 10 Kemp voters said they enthusiastically backed the governor, only about half of Walker’s voters said they were enthusiastically supporting Walker. Among Walker supporters, about 4 in 10 said they backed him with reservations and about 1 in 10 said they were simply opposing the other candidates.”I’ve got some reservations, I’m not 100% Walker, but he is a hell of lot better than what we’ve got up there now with Warnock in there,” said Donny Richardson, a retired Marine who voted for Walker last week in Marietta. “Things need to change.”Warnock has more work to do in a state that resoundingly reelected Kemp over two-time Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams and elected exclusively Republican statewide constitutional officers.That’s especially true when Warnock may have been helped by Republicans who decided not to support Walker but showed up in the general to vote for other Republicans, including their governor. Fifteen percent of moderate and liberal Republicans backed Warnock. Eleven percent of Kemp voters supported Warnock or another candidate, including Libertarian Chase Oliver, compared with just 3% of Abrams voters bucking Warnock.CONSTITUENCIES