♪ ♪♪ you keep thinking election night is over. [ laughter ] i know. but we keep coming back like something you can't quite shake. you're taking the pills. you're doing what your doctor says, but we just keep coming back, relentlessly, again and again. thanks for being back with us. i'm rachel maddow, c coing to yu live from our runoff election night studio. i'm joined once again by my beloved colleagues, joy reid, nicolle wallace, chris hayes is here, and ari melber. many colleagues will be joining us throughout the night. that said, we know why you're actually here, and it doesn't have anything to do with us. you're here because the great steve kornacki is at the big

board with an uncanny ability to deliver the results as they arrive. it's almost spooky. while we steam towards poll closing time in georgia, we're also cognizant of the fact that there is another huge news story that has just broken tonight, the leader of the republican party, the immediate former president who has just announced he's running for president again, his business today was just convicted on all counts in the highest level trial court in the state of new york. there were 17 criminal charges brought against donald trump's family business. the jury tonight returned a verdict of guilty on all 17 of the 17 counts. now, we have been absorbing that news since it broke just before 4:00 eastern today. we have been covering it intensively for the last couple of hours here on msnbc, including our friend ari doing a live and news breaking interview with alvin bragg, the new york

district attorney whose prosecutors brought the case. i'm sure we'll coming to that throughout the evening. but the reason we're all here now encroaching on ari's hour, is because the polls are about to close in the great state of georgia, where the winner of a united states senate seat will be determine by the voters of georgia tonight. encumbent rafael warnock won this seat two years ago in a special election, sparked by the retirement of johnny isakson. having served the remainder of johnny isakson's term, warnock is running for a full six-year term. he's defending his seat against his challenger, herschel walker. the winner of this race will determine whether democrats control an evenly divided 50/50 senate next year or whether they have a firmer, more comfortable 51-49 majority. that sounds like a small difference, i know, but it does

have big implications for what congress and therefore the whole u.s. government, can actually substantively get done. joe manchin. excuse me. polls close in georgia at 7:00 eastern, so that means georgia voters are in their final minute of casting ballots or getting in lines to do so. by all accounts voting has gone smoothly today. few reports of long lines or long waits. that may be at least in part because of the very large number of georgiian who is chose to vote early in this election. many of those, 2 million plus people who voted early, did face very long lines. that's thanks largely to georgia republicans facing a law after the 2020 election, which dramatically cut the amount of early voting allowed before the runoff. it's pretty easy math. you do fewer days, fewer hours for voting, that means longer lines at voting sites and, that was true throughout the early voting period. but today's election day.

seems to have been great turnout as well today. and if there's one thing the people of georgia have proven in the last few years this is when it comes time to vote, they're determined to get it done no matter what. i therefore probably don't have to remind you of this, but i will any way -- if you are within the sound of my voice in the state of georgia right now, remember that as long as you are in line to vote before the polls close at 7:00, you can still vote, no matter how long the line is, no matter how long it takes you to actually get to that voting machine. if you are there in line by 7:00, you get in line, you stay in line, you cast your vote. don't let anyone dissuade you. this is your right. joining us now from georgia from a get out the vote event across the street from a big polling place in atlanta is msnbc national correspondent tremain lee. tell us where you are and what you're seeing. looks like a party. >> reporter: rachel, i'm probably at the livest polling place in the state of georgia right now, in southwest atlanta.

this is a group called "when we vote we win". they have been out here -- listen, they call this a party at the polls. they have free food. the music has been banging. they're making sure anyone who came up had information about voting. they're within the rules. becausefeet, you can't give people food or water. they said let's take it across the street and make sure people who come out are fed. people have been trickling in and out, but organizers say they wanted to make sure they maintain the momentum and energy. it has indeed been a long election season. this marathon to the general election and then this sprint to the runoff with that kind of truncated timeframe being cut from nine weeks to four weeks. but the intensity around not just these two candidates and not just around the policy issues but really about what voting means for this community and what it means for georgia, and what it means for all those people who are part of this machine to make sure black folks and poor people and working class folks have access to the

polls. i have been talking to folks all day about that exact point. what it means, and this is what they had to say. >> the excitement of it, the push. i have two young boys that i'm raising at home. i wanted them to be able to see what it's like to have a black man in office. you know, who is god fearing and that you know, they can do it too. >> this is our job, our duty. there's places all over this world who don't -- where people aren't allowed to vote. hell, we weren't allowed to vote. you know? and now that we're able to, people want to talk about fatigue. i'm sorry, no. i'm not fatigued. >> i'm sorry, i'm not fatigued. i want to turn around again. one more time, to look at this crowd. these nights are special for us here at msnbc, we cover this stuff, but for america, this is democracy in action. there was so much concern about voter suppression, about limiting access to the polls, about when you can drop off ballots and mail them in.

all the efforts to try to restrict the vote. so this community, this state, people in atlanta especially, metro atlanta, and in the rural parts of the state, organize voters. getting the word out that black voters matter bus is here. you have when we vote we win. these folks are about it, they're serious, and they're not playing games. >> an amazing sight and an amazing part of the story. i have to ask you, obviously, we can see over your shoulder. we can see the enthusiasm of those activists as you say, a party at the polls is very much evident there. when you're seeing people come up to the polling place, regular voters comingp because that's their place to vote, what's the interaction like between voters and these folks who are across the street, again, outside the perimeter where they need to be legally, but how is the -- what's the interaction, the dynamic like between regular voters showing up and these people who are there to be encouraging to convey their enthusiasm? >> at first, it's a little curiosity. when you stand in the parking lot just across the street,

folks hear the music. they vote and come out, and they see a line of food trucks and they come up and say it's free. they grab a ticket, then they start interacting. you have the naacp out here, when we vote we win, black voters matter. it's a real community feel. people who know each other, those who don't. you see some young folks, older people. there's a real sense of community. i have referenced it a couple times but all the streets around here, you see placards with john lewis, barack obama, and martin luther king saying vote early, and others have the same picture and it says vote. there's a deep connection to something much bigger in this community. it's not just about your civic duty. it sounds cliche at this point that people fought and died, but that's the feeling. strangers coming together all around this idea of making your voice heard through the ballot. >> msnbc national correspondent tymaine lee. tremendous reporting. we'll be back with you throughout the course of the night. thank you, my friend. >> let's get right to steve

kornacki at the big board. steve, looks like we're about six minutes away from poll closing time. can you just tell us what you're expecting in terms of how think the night is going to unfold, how long a night it might be in terms of getting these results? >> a couple benchmarks we saw in the november general election in georgia. i'll call those results up to remind everybody sort of what the starting point was. this is how the november general election finished. warnock ran about a point better than herschel walker. he was a little less, warnock was, than 25,000 votes. if he had gotten about 25,000 extra votes, we wouldn't be here tonight covering this. he would have cleared 50%, would have won outright. he came out ahead of walker, not enough to get away from a runoff situation. now, what we saw in the november general election, though, was a little different than what we have seen in 2020 in georgia. in 2020, georgia is a state that kept us waiting for days and days and days to get an outcome. it was little after midnight in

november when we were able to call, when nbc news was able to call this race would go to a runoff, that nobody would break fifty%. we were able to declare a verdict shortly after midnight. that was in a very close race here inside one point. the other thing that was different in november that i think we expect tonight is we got a lot more vote early in the night. when i say early, i mean it was 7:01 p.m. on election night in november when we heard from a big county right away, richmond county. this is where augusta is, a big democratic county. basically as soon as the polls closed, they put out all of the early vote. they're allowed to tabulate today, the in-person early vote that had been taken place in the days and weeks leading up to today. they can tabulate that, they can tabulate the mail ballots they received in the last couple weeks and theoretically, if they do that, they can report it out as soon as polls close. so we saw that in richmond

county where augusta is, and then 7:06 p.m. on election night, six minutes after the polls closed that the biggest county in the state, fulton county, reported out more than a quarter million votes, basically all of the early vote in fulton county was reported out within six minutes. so what did that mean and what is that likely to mean for tonight? well, there's been a push in georgia to get some of these bigger counties to report out all of that vote that they can tabulate ahead of time, to get them to report that out fairly early. and a lot of them did that in november. what that resulted in is sort of the running tally, the scoreboard here on the side given warnock a very big early lead. in the 7:00, 7:00 to 9:00 window on election night, warnock had double digit leads over walker consistently in the state-wide tally. what happens after that, you start from the rest of the state, a lot of small in terms of population, big in terms of geographic location. small counties start reporting

out the same-day vote, the votes cast in person today. that's where republicans are the strongest. what you can expect when they start to come in, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, whenever that is, that's where walker on election night made big gains. and what had been a warnock lead of double digits, suddenly by late at night, walker actually took the lead in the tally over warnock. 11:30 on election night, walker was leading. then the final things to report remaining vote especially from the atlanta metro area. some of these gigantic democratic heavy counties in the atlanta area, reporting out the remainder of their election day vote in some cases. in some cases reporting the remainder of their mail-in ballots and that's what ultimately put raphael warnock ahead state-wide on election night. it was i think about 3:45 a.m. the final votes came in from election -- they were counted on election night. they were in cobb county, about 25,000 mail-in ballots.

warnock won them overwhelmingly, and it accounted for a big chunk of the 37,000 vote lead over walker. the basic pattern in november. big start for the democrats, then a big comeback for republicans and then a big finish for the democrats. that was the vote reporting pattern we saw in november. >> steve, do you have any intel today on which counties might have done a very thorough job of tabulating the early votes that they came in, so early votes that were mailed in or dropped off? as you said, they can start tabulating them today at 7:00 a.m. due joany intel from various counties today as to who's finished their vote? >> i don't know in terms of who's finished it. the fact we saw that from fulton county at 7:06 in november suggests if they could do it then with so much more on the ballot, i can't see why they couldn't do that again. augusta was close. another one to keep an eye on. howsen county, that's where warner robins is. i think they reported out at

about 7:10 p.m. last time. a couple other counties in the immediate atlanta metro area were in the first half hour. again, what you're seeing even in some of the republican friendly counties that report this preelection vote out right away, it's, remember, that's the most democratic friendly share of the vote you're going to get in that county. so if you're talking about mail-in ballots, if you're talking about the early in-person vote, that's the most democratic friendly. when they report those big batches out first, in a blue county, it's going to be a huge advantage for warnock. even in a red county, those are the best numbers warnock gets in that county. what's going to make or break herschel walker is the election day vote, especially in some of these, you look at the outer periphery of the atlanta metro area. there are big in terms of population counties that are red on the map. they produce the largest pluralities for republican candidates of any in the state. is walker getting big turnout there and getting numbers like

brian kemp was able to get in the governor's race in november. that's what will make or break him. >> about 15 seconds away from poll closing time. as soon as we start to get in any results, we'll be right back with you. again, lots of early vote. more than 2 million early votes cast in georgia in this runoff election. republicans are very excited about how many people they saw turning out to vote on election day. they think that will be a heavily republican leaning election day vote, but we will not know until the numbers start coming in. it is now 7:00 eastern time. and nbc news can project, shockingly, that the u.s. senate runoff race in georgia is at this hour too early to call. now, we have no idea how long this too early to call characterization will last. i can tell you nothing more than that because that's all we've got from the decision desk. but we have a democratic incomdant raphael warnock standing for this senate seat

for the fourth time in two years. he made it to the runoff in the first instance two years ago and won in the runoff. he made it to the runoff for re-election, and now he is contendingen the runoff tonight. his republican challenger, trump-backed republican, former football star herschel walker. steve promises that we may get a bunch of early vote, especially from some of these fast voting counties. and again, the democrats tend to be very confident in what they can get in terms of early vote. republicans tend to be confident in terms of what they can get day of. both sides are crowing about the numbers they got in their respective lanes where they think they have a real chance. looking at the polls, are we even allowed to look at polls anymore? everything basically, almost everything is within the margin of error even if senator warnock has been up, i would say, generally by less than a point if you take the average. >> if you think about the way democrats are looking at it, they're looking at the number

sahil kapur was reporting on. the demographics of the early vote. it's more african american that the vote was in november. there was a dropoff in african american turnout for whatever reason in the november election. i heard a lot of anecdotal stories when i was in atlanta yesterday about people knowing people who didn't come out because they assumed warnock was going to win and they didn't see the urgency and didn't come out. we know that the electorate that's coming out that came out early is more african american. it's about three points more african american than it was in november. it's heavily female. it's like 53% female, which democrats are very excited about. it's got a lot more young voters than they had in november. they're seeing a lot of turnout at college campus. that's mitigated by the fact the new voting law makes it easier to challenge voters. something like 60,000 voters were challenged under the new voting law. for college students it's especially difficult to vote now in georgia. the early long, long, long lines

were also because of the voting law. so everything was stacked in. and then the other thing that voting law did is it make the early vote a shorter period. only four weeks. it used to be a longer period for runoff elections. republicans have legislatively stacked the georgia laws to make it as possible -- to make it as easy as possible for them to win and as hard as possible for democrats to win. they have stacked it their way, but the demographics of those turning out look much more favorable for warnock. >> what the republicans will concede when injected with truth serum and tied to a chair is that the kemp voter was not a walker voter. and we learned that four weeks ago. so i heard senator warnock talking about the voters that came out and voted for him and kemp. those voters have already voted and voted for warnock. raffensperger and kemp were far more popular vote getters and drivers of republican voters than walker. so if the only republican you

have to vote for tonight is walker, that is not a good sign. >> it also may mean that complicates the ability to extrapolate from november's turnout to figuring out what's going to happen tonight f it really is essentially a completely different ballot with a totally different set of appeals to different voters. it makes -- gives it more interest. >> hard to find walker voters who didn't exist in the general. >> the other part of this, there's this sort of amazing two forces at work. the georgia republican party gets together after they lose in 2020, these two senate races, and they lose the presidential and they pass this new voting law to make it more difficult, the margin to vote. >> predicated on fraud they risked their identity as republicans to say it didn't happen. >> then donald trump decides to basically continue to bash early voting and ronna mcdaniel is out today being like, please, for the love of god, stop doing this. why would you tell people to not take advantage of a voting method? >> absentee collapsed because of them. >> i think i'm doing this, which

is rude, because i think we have some votes. i recognize those gesticulating motions from steve. >> this is just what we were teeing up, exactly as it happened in november. richmond county which is where augusta is, one of the big democratic counties in georgia right off the bat, they come out and release we believe this is their mail vote and their in-person early vote. that's what it was in november. they tabulated it all on election day. spit it out as soon as the polls close. so if that's what we're looking at here, i believe it is, you see warnock getting 79% of it, walker getting 21% of it. what would be left to come in richmond county would be the election day vote, what people went out and cast ballots in person today, but just to give you a sense of comparison, and this is not necessarily apples to apples for some of the reasons you were just discussing in terms of the composition of the electorate, but as a point of reference, when we got this first report from richmond county in november of the early vote and the mail-in vote,

warnock hit 75% with it. so he hit 79% with it tonight. now, again, it could be that -- and look, as i'm speaking, fulton county, this is the biggest county in the state, this is where atlanta is, and again, this is what they did in november as well. in november, what we were looking at and what i believe we're looking at here, essentially this is the early vote. this is the early in-person vote. the votes that were cast pre-election day in person by voters in fulton county. warnock, a core democratic county, the biggest in the state, warnock getting 82% of them. again, i can tell you that first report on election night, warnock got 75%. so again, this is higher for warnock than he got in that initial report. this is not necessarily apples to apples because we want to see the dynamic here, the mix of same-day versus election day could be a little different, but again, these are two core democratic counties where you

see right away, warnock jumping out, getting massive margins. that's what it does to the state wide count. we have 7% of all the votes counted state wide, and a 3-1 lead for warnock. almost all of it powered by fulton county, to a lesser extent by richmond county. there are smaller counties we're starting to get results in. to give you an example, one thing we're going to follow here, we're going to compare as the results come in. how do they look tonight versus how did they look back in the november general election. in mitchell county, right away, they spit outee believe this is the early vote, so this would be as friendly as the vote gets to raphael warnock. once the same-day vote comes in, you can expect walker to advance. walker's starting point is 46.5%. he basically got 57% in this county back in november. so what he needs is for the same-day vote to bring him at least to this level and really to get above this level is what

he's going to need to do in any given county because remember, walker finished a point behind raphael warnock in the count in november. that's the starting point there for warnock, and again, we're starting to get these numbers. these are just scattered numbers from throughout the state right here. and we can just reset and show you state wide what this is adding up to, and get used to seeing big warnock leads. for the first couple hours, and it's not going to sit at 75%, but i think you're going to see substantial warnock advantages just for this dynamic we're talking about. we're getting early vote reported out, especially from a couple population centers. again, if november is a prelude to tonight, you're going to see a lot of these other counties right around atlanta in the next 20 or 30 minutes, they're going to join in. they're also going to report early vote, mail-in vote. that's going to benefit warnock. then what's going to start happening is the same-day vote is going to start coming in from all of the other counties in the

state. there's 159 counties in georgia. warnock actually won fewer than 30 of them on election night back in november. he got more votes state-wide than walker did, but the vast majority of counties in the state, a lot are very small, are republican counties. as the same-day vote comes in from the republican counties, that gap will close a little bit there. what we're really building towards and what we're really going to be looking at, a couple things. we have fulton county, the early vote from fulton county. some dynamics we're looking for over the next couple hours, i can set them up now, if you go north of fulton county, you go to these two counties right here, cherokee and forscythe counties, these are the two biggest republican vote producing counties in the state of georgia. this gets to one of those dynamics you were just talking about a minute ago. this is absolutely key to any chance herschel walker has tonight. if you're a republican and are going to win in georgia, you

don't just win these counties, you win them in land slides. you can see how walker did. he beat warnock by a 34-point margin. that's good, but compare it to how brian kemp did in the governor's race. he won by a 46-point margin. again, just do the math here. it was a 37,000-vote difference state-wide. warnock got 37,000 more votes than walker did state-wide. look at the difference in the margins. walker won this county by 33,000 votes and change. we'll call it 34,000 votes. kemp won the same county, look at that, by 47,000 votes. a 13,000-vote difference right there. and again, all walker needed to do was get 37,000 more votes and he would have caught raphael warnock. underperforming in these big republican counties was a huge problem for herschel walker. so we want to see what he's counting on, and cherokee, i can show you the exact same dynamic. awalker won this county by 38

points. look how brian kemp did. he won it by 50. that's a huge difference in terms of what they're netting for votes here. we want to see as those counties come in and we should get numbers, forscythe reported its first batch at 7:30 p.m. last time. that's one thing we're looking at. walker, he had kemp campaigning with him this time. his campaign said it will help hem get the turnout and get republicans in place to vote for him. >> we'll check back in with you as votes continue to come in. chris, you were interrupted as we were starting to get in our first results. what both joy and nicolle were describing is absolutely being borne out in at least the very preliminary results we're seeing. >> it speaks to enduring strangeness and self-defeating strangeness of the maga era of the republican party which we're very much still in. which is for petulant, petty, and ridiculous reasons, the ex-president, whose business was

convicted on 17 counts today, has decided voting is anathema to him, and anyone who is devoted to him should not par take in it. you just talk to anyone on a campaign. it's like, well, if you could have the thing now or you could have it in a week, why don't you just give it to me now? how would you feel about someone giving you $100? you like it now or eight days? you probably want it now. he's going around like, wait, wait. and it's driving them all nuts. >> the reason that never works and the reason that people who work in campaigns love absentee and early voting is what if it rains? this is the thing we used to obsess about. oh, my god, what if it rains? >> or you get a flat tire or anything. >> if election day, right, you trip and fall and break your knee, anything can happen on election day. so what especially for african american voters, it's a big deal. that's why raphael warnock's campaign sued the state of

georgia to get that weekend, that saturday voting, because most of the strategy for democratic candidates is to get out a huge early vote and to run up the score so that republicans have to try to make it up on election day. it used to be that republicans used to do the same thing with absentee and now they don't. >> let me interrupt. steve was telling us to watch cherokee county. i think that red dot means we have some cherokee county. >> looks like we got the early in-person vote from cherokee county, and take a look here. also, there might be some mail in this mix as well. i think that's critical because again, remember, these are the best numbers when you're talking the early vote and talking the mail vote, you're talking the best numbers that warnock is going to get. so right now, warnock with this first big batch, and it accounts for about 40% of all the votes that's going to come out of cherokee county, warnock is running at 37.7%. he got 29% here back in

november. walker, you can see again, we showed you, 67.6% is what walker got. he's running at 62.3% right now. this in a nutshell, is the ball game for walker. this is a winning number for a republican state-wide in georgia. what brian kemp did in cherokee county. cherokee county is the number one plurality producing county for republicans in the entire state of georgia. in fact, cherokee county is one of the biggest plurality producing counties for republicans in any state in the country. that's how significant this county is for republicans. talking about 45 minutes north of atlanta here, sort of the fringe of the atlanta metro area. it is core republican. it's become a little less republican with time. kemp won this thing overwhelmingly. if you're walker, this wasn't enough. this is enough, and you don't have to get 74% out of cherokee, because kemp won with a margin over stacey abrams. he beat her by eight points state wide. if you're walker, your target in

a county like this is to be over 70%. what this sets the stage for is getting that pre-election day vote. that's essentially what they just reported out in cherokee county. this is as good as it's going to get for raphael warnock in cherokee county. this is probably as bad as it's going to look for herschel walker. election day vote, how much of it is there? how many turned out in cherokee county today? is it enough to get walker back to 67.6%? if that's all it is, that's probably not enough for him. he's got to go above 67.6%. he's got to land somewhere probably north of 70%. he has to do that in cherokee county and a bunch of other counties, next door, forscythe county is a huge one. just south of atlanta, fayette county is another one. looks like douglas county, we may have gotten votes in. here's another one. a county -- boy, this county has been on like a lot of the metro area, a political journey away from the republican party toward

the democratic party. you can see warnock carried this with almost two-thirds of the vote. they released the early vote in douglas county and there's warnock sitting, that's his baseline, almost 70% for tonight. so what's going to happen in douglas county is the remainder of the vote, most of the remainder of the vote is going to be the election day vote. it's going to be what people went out and did in person at the polls today. we want to see in douglas county that warnock number figures to come down as the election day vote is cast. does it come down all the way to 64.8% or lower? that's what walker needs it to do. or does it come down and land north of 64.8%? that would be great news for warnock, taking a core democratic county and actually improving on his performance from the general election. so again, you're getting in a lot of these big counties, these are sort of the baseline numbers for the night. they're generally going to be the best they get for democrats, the worst for republicans, but you want to see as they come in,

you want to compare them to how they looked in november. anywhere where warnock is landing above where he finished in november, that's a good sign for him. and for walker, anywhere where he's landing below where he finished would be a very bad sign for him. so again, we're just -- just waiting and making sure nothing else big has lit up. we can take a look, doherty county, where albany is, this county has the largest black population of any county in georgia. this is 70% african american. you can see warnock here, again, in the early vote, getting about 82%. i think you were talking about this. this was, if there was one concern for democrats that emerged from the general election in georgia, it was that black turnout relative to previous midterms was down. and you could see it in a county like doherty county. you could see walker obviously won it -- warnock won it overwhelmingly, and he's over 80%, but this is a county where it's not just for democrats.

it's not just about winning by a big margin. it's also seeing if they can improve upon their turnout in a place like doherty county relative to november. that was one thing we saw in the runoff last year that got warnock elected. warnock increased and the democrats increased black turnout from the 2020 general election to the 2021 senate runoff. they're trying to do the same thing this year. this is one of the counties you would look for it in. another county you look for it in, this is a small county, this is mitchell county. it's a great example of where the dropoff in black turnout hurt democrats last november, because this is the result in mitchell county from last november. there's a large black population here. walker won this county by basically 15 points. in the senate runoff last year when warnock got elections over kelly loeffler, she only won this county by five points. so that's the difference between losing it by 15 or losing it by 5. that's the difference for democrats between having a

really strong black turnout and disappointing black turnout, and there are a lot of counties especially in southwest georgia where this dynamic obtains so that's one of the things we look for tonight. again, even in a county that might go republican, warnock, if he gets high black turnout, doesn't have to lose mitchell county by 15 points. he could lose it by 5, by 4. obviously, that's one of his campaign's goals tonight. i'm seeing we're getting a few more votes in here. clayton county, overwhelmingly -- i think this is the single most democratic county in the state. clayton, i'm not quite sure here. it doesn't like like they released all of their early vote at once. we're getting a taste of clayton county. rockdale county here, in the atlanta metro area, a county that's gone more and more democratic over the last generation or so. again, you're getting early vote reported out in rockdale county here. warnock, you can see, this is his baseline for tonight, 81%. he wants to finish at least

where he was at and probably a little above where he finished in november, which was 73%. all these early vote reports coming in state-wide, we have 15% of the vote, and warnock with that early advantage of 23 points state-wide. but again, a lot of that with early vote from big counties. >> steve, thank you. and again, the big narrative summation at this point is that as we expected, a lot of counties are seeing counties all over the state reporting votes they were able to start counting at 7:00 a.m. when polls opened. that's absentee ballots or mail ed in. they were able to get the early votes precanvassed, essentially, precounted so right when the polls closed they could report those numbers. those numbers were always expected to be heavily democratic. and republicans are really counting on the votes that were cast today. on same-day votes being the ones that are going to make up all those numbers for them. republicans anecdotally and in their sort of meta equivalent of

the spin room today have been pounding their chests and saying they saw great voter turnout on election day today. they think their numbers are going to be huge when the same-day vote gets counted. they have been very confident along those lines. we're going to look at those claims, get some independent observation as to whether or not those claims might be warranted. we're going trait to georgia when we come back. stay with us. kevin, where are you?! kevin?!?!?.... hey, what's going on? i'm right here! i was busy cashbacking for the holidays with chase freedom unlimited. you know i can't believe you lost another kevin. it's a holiday tradition! earn big time with chase freedom unlimited. ♪ ♪ get refunds.com powered by innovation refunds can help your business get a payroll tax refund, even if you got ppp and it only takes eight minutes to qualify.

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welcome back to our special election coverage of tonight's u.s. senate race in georgia. we have about 18% of the vote in. polls closed about 25, 26 minutes ago in georgia. just about 18% of the vote in. this race is too early to call. at this point, senator raphael warnock leads herschel walker in the vote we have in, but it is too early to call. neither of these candidates is projected as leading the race in terms of how it's going to run out but we're getting vote in fast and furious. we'll be checking in with steve kornacki as he gets new results from new counties. joining us now from georgia from raphael warnock campaign headquarters is greg blue steen. one of the things he's been following today is information and confidence on both sides

about voter turnout in this race. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> so first of all -- >> we're definitely hearing cautious optimism right now. >> i was going to say, tell us what you're hearing at warnock headquarters and how they're feeling, what the vibe is there? >> yeah, i just heard from a senior warnock adviser who said the numbers are looking good for their campaign, but wait for an hour to start celebrating, at least an hour, as more of these numbers start to come in. they're seeing signs that senator warnock is overperforming his numbers from the november midterm, where steve just mentioned, he fared very well and actually got more vote total than herschel walker. if he continues to overperform these numbers. it's hard to see a path to victory for herschel walker. >> habit is a big part to voting, and now runoffs have become more traditional. what are you seeing on the ground going into today about whether this has become a recent

tradition and whether you see that being high turnout numbers today? >> that's such a good point. think about it this way. senator warnock's supporters have now gone to vote for him five times since november 2020. that's the case. so there is this engrained pattern for many of his allies and supporters in georgia who are used to voting again and again and again for senator warnock, where herschel walker is a first-time candidate. republicans in general came out demoralized from the last one a year ago here. >> in terms of the sort of spin room dynamic today, we have heard some reporting over the last couple hours that republicans knew that the early voting numbers might be counted first and they knew the early voting numbers would be sort of glum for them. but we have heard real expressions of confidence on the republican side that they feel like the same-day election day voting turnout was strong. maybe even stronger than they expected. what can you tell us about that, sort of those expressions of confidence on the republican

side? is that spin or based on data that looks the same way to independent observers? >> it's based on data because we know that more than 1.3 million people according to the secretary of state's office, have voted on election day. that exceed said a lot of projections for many of the analysts out there. it could be approaching 1.4 million voters when it's said and done. that could be good news for herschel walker. as you expected, he's expecting big day election turnout. we don't know where the turnout is going to come from. in dekalb county, there was a huge election day turnout. that will obviously favor senator warnock. we could see a surge in election day turnout that ends up nullifying republican advantage, but it's still too early to tell. >> we all covered during the compressed early voting period that was allowed before this runoff really long lines. long lines around the state, long lines that lasted throughout the whole early voting period.

which is, as i said, was shorter than it usually was, or was in previous elections, but was still quite a few days when people had a chance to early vote. is there any indication the long lines might have been dissuading to voters, they might have been suppressive? >> yeah, there were long lines and of course it was soggy weather, too, in most parts of georgia. so that affected some of the turnout as well. but the average wait time was just a few minutes across the state of georgia. of course, that's rural areas and of course busier, more populous polling sites. we saw lines as long as 45 minutes, closer to an hour in some parts of the state. we sent reporters to one particular spot in cherokee county and they had a particularly long line. in general, state elections officials and voting rights advocates say the process has been relatively smooth. >> greg, msnbc political contributor, at warnock headquarters. i have a feeling we're going to be back with you over the course of the night.

thanks for being with us. >> thank you. >> as we have been talking, i am seeing steve's board filling up with red and blue weird shapes. steve, are you getting any full counties in? are we still looking mostly at early and absentee votes? >> i mean, a couple things i can show you here. first of all, literally in the last two minutes, two giant counties, two of the bish in the state reported a ton of early voting. one is cobb county here, you can see. this includes we believe the mail-in vote. again, this is a county that if you went back to 2012, this was a republican county in presidential elections. now the warnock number is extremely high here. he won this thing by 16 points. so again, i think this is -- the mail is taking up a significant chunk of this here. but this number here that warnock got in 2022 just is part of a long trajectory in cobb county going back a generation or so toward the democratic party. so again, anything above 57%

there is incredible news for warnock's campaign. the other biggy we just got in, a big chunk from gwinnett county. it has nearly a million people right now, and again, another one of these counties if you went back not that long ago, this was a republican bastion. you're looking at a mix of early and mail vote, so this is very democratic friendly, so walker does stand to improve as the same-day vote gets added to the mix, but can he improve enough to hit that number at least that he hit in the general election back in november? these counties especially in the atlanta metro area, if warnock is exceeding what he got back in november, i mean, this is where the votes are, just numerically. some are -- gwinnett is a giant. in terms of completed counties, we have one, a very small county, but i'll flag this one because this is as republican as it gets in georgia. just in terms of the percentages. brantley county has the highest percentage of any of these 159

counties in georgia, brantley county has the highest percentage of white voters without college degrees. 87% white noncollege. we talked about how that gap between white voters with degrees. white voters without degrees, that partisan gap has been getting wider and wider. white voters without college degrees are a huge core republican constituency. they make up nearly 90% of the electorate in this county, this small county. one thing that's interesting is there may still be a few same-day votes to come in, but we have basically i think almost all of the vote here, and walker is running above his november level by about 1.3 points right here. and also, i think of note, if you look at the level of turnout, the 5,038, a small county, but more than 5500 votes cast. that turnout level in the small county is very close to the turnout level for the november general election. this is one small county, this is something walker needs to

multiply by like 50 because there are a bunch of counties around the state not quite as overwhelmingly republican as this, but small, very republican counties are what his campaign needs to get out of today, big turnout and to improve on how he finished in the november general election. so you are seeing that in brantley county. on the other end of the spectrum, by the way, other end of the sort of degree spectrum is this county here, coney county, right outside athens where the university of georgia is, this has the highest concentration of white voters with college degrees of any county in the state. it's actually a republican county but it's the county where walker lagged the worst behind brian kemp in the november election. you can see kemp won this county by 48 points. walker only won it by 34. you see right now, walker with the early vote in oconee county is up by 26 over warnock. this is one of those counties

where again, walker has to get close to 70% here. he's got to get past what he got in november. he's got to get close to 70%. this is his starting point tonight, 63%, with that early vote that's counted right there. and one other i think that we have a good chunkote in here, yeah, is sumpter county. you're looking at early vote here. this is a majority black county, 51% african american, this is also famously the home of plains, georgia, jimmy carter's hometown in this county. what you're looking at is the most democratic friendly share of the vote. warnock carried this county by three points in november. when warnock got elected to the senate in the runoff in january of 2021, his margin here was six points. again, this is one of those counties where we talked about how democrats were a little disappointed with what they were able to get in terms of black turnout in the november general election. warnock won it by six points, his margin was only three in

november. his starting point tonight with the early vote is a 16-point advantage over walker. we'll see as the same-day comes in, but this is the benchmark, does it land closer to six or closer to three? it's where the six was, that's great news for warnock. it's three or less, obviously, that becomes more of a problem, a concern for him, and becomes more good news for walker. again, that's that dynamic, this whole region of the state in particular, that dynamic of african american turnout and whether it changes the results from november is something we'll keep a close eye on. more than a third of the vote is in now, in georgia. again, we said expect warnock to have a big lead. he does right now. the question is, you got a glimpse of it in the small county i showed you, brantley county. a lot of small republican -- we got a big batch from a big republican friendly batch. i'm very curious where that came in. oh, okay. they're retabulating -- that's what it is.

that number we had showed you a minute ago in cobb county. cobb county, there may have been an error in our system in terms of that vote. we were showing you 78% that warnock was running at with that early batch. even though that's a core democratic county now, that seemed very high. there might have been an error there in our data entry, so they're checking on that one. what that has done is pulled the state-wide margin back here to 55/45 right now for warnock or walker. >> steve, i'm reluctant to ask you a follow-up question if the board just did something funky, but looking back again, comparing what we're looking at tonight to what we saw last month in november, when we got to this runoff election in the first place, when there was about a third of the vote in in november, can we do an apples and apples comparison? >> the problem right now is we know that the composition of the

early vote is demographically different this time around. we knew coming into tonight these were probably going to be more democratic friendly numbers in these initial batches because you can see it, georgia is one of the few states where you register voters and there's a record of the race, the gender of the voter, and so you knew from the early voting data that was available that there were more african american voters as a percentage of the electorate in the early vote this time around than there were in the run-up to november. we had a strong sense these numbers were going to be more democratic friendly. they certainly have been so far, so they're meeting that expectation. it just creates that variable of, what does the same-day vote look like in some of these counties? clearly, for walker to have a shot at this thing, it has to be enormous. i showed you one tinea county right there. that's going to have to multiply by dozens for walker to have a shot tonight. >> with about 35% of the vote in, it's too early to call in this crucial georgia u.s. senate

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it is election night again. too early to call in the big u.s. senate race in georgia tonight. we have about 31% of the vote in. this is where the vote stands right now.

again, the important bottom line here for the decision desk is that this is too early to call. let's go back to jerj georgia now to trymaine lee where the party is still going on at a get out the vote event across the street from a polling place in atlanta. even though polls are closed, it looks like things are still happening. >> rachel, it's election night. the party won't be over for a long time, until folks have an answer about the senate race here. you think georgia is poised to elect its first black senator for a full-time term ever in history. what got georgia purple was a lot of organizing. i want to bring in one of those organizers, debra scott. what has it taken, all the work to organize voters around these very critical elections? >> it really took the effort of a lot of coalition people working together, coalition organizations working together. and it really took door knocking.

knocking on doors, talking to people and having those one-on-one conversations at the doors and at events and asking people, what do they care about? and making sure they understand that these issues are really about them and that they really have the power. it's about who is going to serve you best. so we began to talk to them about those issues. it took door knocking, organizations working together, it took calls, it took it all. and one of the things we did, and in reference to sb-202, we brought the food to them. we brought the fun to them. this is voter joy. we don't have voter apathy here. we have voter joy. we have been happy all day because we know when we vote, we win. >> the runoff election cut from nine weeks a year ago to four weeks. how did that change the game? >> it changed the game tremendously but when you're organized and know how to mobilize your people, it was easy because we worked together and made it happen.

>> rachel. >> this is joy reid. i have a question for you because you guys were knocking on doors. we know that there were 77,000 plus voters who did not participate in november who did participate in this runoff election. i'm wondering if you encountered any of those folks and if they told you why they came out now. in november, they had the opportunity to elect the first black woman governor, you had warnock on the ballot. do you have any sense of what the difference was now? >> i think the difference was we really focused on the voter. and focused not just on what was happening in this country and what's happening in the world, but we focused on the voter and made sure that they understood that they were the most important thing. and so we kept knocking and calling and asking them to turn out and turning their families out. the difference was having that real conversation with those voters about those issues and having their friends and family

call them. >> trymaine lee, with us from atlanta tonight, with debra scott from georgia stand up, we vote we win, those are the folks who turned that voter joy out across the street from that polling place tonight. it's great to have you both with us. thank you. as we continue to get these results in tonight during our coverage of this u.s. senate race in georgia. steve, are you -- are you gesticulating because you have new vote? >> we do. again, i think an interesting dynamic potentially starting to emerge here. let me take you through a couple things we're starting to see. again, go down to south georgia here. we're showing you a few minutes ago brantley county, a very small but very republican county. here's a similar county, again, overwhelmingly republican. and what's interesting here is there's still vote to come, and we believe that's election day vote to come, and just take a look here at how it went in november. walker got 83.5%. he's already running at 85% and

there is still vote to come. we believe election day vote that will be overwhelmingly we expect walker votes. so this is, we showed you it in brantley county. you're seeing it here in berrien county as well. you look at the turnout level. this is on pace with what's left to be very close to the november general election number. so that's two counties now, two of these small rural counties where walker looks like he's going to be exceeding what he got in november and good election day turnout. here's another small one in far north georgia. again, a place, towns county is a place where core republican walker underperformed kemp in the general election back in november. he got 78.3%. kemp got 84.5%. tonight it looks like walker is going to land better, two points better than he landed in november. he needs at least that kind of improvement over his november number. he may be hitting in a place like towns his bare minimum.

here's a bigger county. this is where valdosta is in south georgia. this is an interesting one. this is a republican county. walker won it as you can see here by 18 points in the general election. when warnock got elected in the runoff in january of 2021, he was able to hold kelly loeffler, warnock was, to a 12-point margin here. what we got left here is same-day vote. you can expect that walker number is going to rise, and is walker on pace to get something similar to what he got in november and ideally from his standpoint to beat it? he may have a chance to do that here. the picture that's starting to emerge is, outside of atlanta metro area, the atlanta metro a huge part of the state, but especially in the rural republican areas we're showing you, the early indications we're getting are favorable to walker in terms of turnout and in terms of building on what he was able to get in the november general election.

that said, the atlanta metro area is a huge, huge participate of the story here. fast growing, where the population is, and what we mainly have in the atlanta metro area, again, showing you for example fulton county, biggest in the state. 10%, 11% of the vote is going to come outall we have right now, , in these counties, is the early vote. we see warnock doing better in the early vote, this time around, and he did back in november. it is variable with the same day turnout, what it will look like, but the possibility here excessive walker, potentially, having a good night in rural georgia, and warnock, having a good night in metro atlanta. again, relative to the november general election. either campaign, i think, right now, could look at this map, with what's filling in right now, and find something encouraging, and discouraging. if you are the warnock campaign, you are encouraged by these

early voting numbers. you see these results out of fulton county, where the show out of gwinnett county. there is nearly 1 million people, who live in gwinnett county. warnock starting point tonight will, be 68 and a half percent. if he lands anywhere above, in gwinnett county, what he did in november, that, alone, could offset a lot of good performances for walker, and in much smaller red counties. you can see, from warnock campaign standpoint, very positive, early indications of the atlanta metro area, and from what we are starting to see, it is early, but what we are seeing from georgia, you can see encouraging signs for the walker campaign as well. that adds up, potentially, to a close race. >> fascinating. we are heading into this, we are looking at polls that are tighter in almost every instance, and here we are, on election night, watching the results come in. good news for the republicans, and good news for the democrats. >> an amazing part of this herschel walker candidacy, and

i say this with all due respect, is it is an unusual, and at times, troubled, candidacy. even republicans have said, and mitch mcconnell talked about candidate quality. they used to talk about yellow dog democrats, which are people who were so partisan, that would soon unfold for a yellow dog, then a republican. you get this partisan feeling here, especially in some places that steve walked us through. even with, i think, herschel walker's well-established candidate problems, we have covered them, the audience knows them, personal scandals, trouble expressing himself a, lack of interest in the government powers he would wield, among other things. that was a capsule summary. we are seeing some republicans who follow the numbers all night who are saying, i heard about that, i am aware of that, i am aware of his positions, and hypocrisy's on choice, but they are voting for him anyways. it's a test of that partisan line. >> the thing that is fascinating to me is the person who has spoken the most about herschel walker's candidacy is not herschel walker, it is

lindsey graham. the case that lindsey graham has been making for those voters, where they're saying it's a team vote, not an individual vote. he is not making that case. he has gone out to say, and he is not talking to black voters, let's be clear. lindsey graham has no currency among black folks. he's talking to white voters. he is saying, vote for herschel walker, not because herschel walker would be good for georgia, he's never said that. not vote for herschel walker because of abortion, even though this is a state where abortion is not an issue. i've said, the x-factor in this election, the reason i never believed the red wave thing is because of abortion. abortion is such a super organ that factor that, i never believed you could have a red wave with abortion being throttled. but it's not an issue in georgia. georgia is a state with a six-week abortion ban. it's not even on the ballot. here is a state where you can test your theory, purely, about maga-ism and its currency. lindsey graham didn't say vote

because of maga, he said vote so we can prove we are not racist. that was his main selling point. he said, don't vote for him because he would do great things in the senate, abortion rights, these policies, he said to vote for him because it wouldn't make young black folks around the country want to be republicans, it would inspire people of color to be republicans, and prove we are not racist. that is a heck of an argument to make. >> he did it while infantilism the candidate, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him. it was the most ludicrous. not only was the message ludicrous, but the delivery was something that if there wasn't 1 million things breaking every day, would have been scrutinized. >> i need to say this because while i was down there, the word i heard the most, particularly from black voters in georgia, was representation. there are only two people running, they are both black, but the one that proves if you want to say, proves that america is not racist us, clearly, warnock.

warnock is in intelligent, to articulate man, who can speak fluently, who understands the job of being a senator, who is doing the job of being a senator, pass a lot of bills that helped georgia, he's talking about how we need more hospitals, they're closing, it's a big issue in the state, and he's on it. he saying, we need to talk about big agriculture. herschel walker can't put a sentence together. herschel walker, literally, without any irony, used the word, and i'm sorry to say this word on television -- as a compliment about himself. >> don't believe us, that mitch mcconnell said they have a candidate quality. >> lindsey graham, this is a great lesson for republicans. the answer to solving your demographic problem is not to put forward a candidate like this, of such a low quality. it is an insult to black people, and they felt insulted. >> we've got much more to come, as we watch the vote get counted in this crucial senate runoff race in georgia. we will take a quick break, and

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night coverage, here, in this big important to u.s. senate race in, the great state of georgia. polls have been closed in georgia for almost, exactly, one hour. we are getting votes in from across the state. as you can see, the race is too early to call a, but 42% of the voters in. the reason we have gotten in 42% of the vote in just one hour, is because counties are allowed to start counting early vote, votes that were dropped off, mailed in, as of 7 am on election day. they can start that count. so, by the time the polls close at 7 pm, they can report a lot of the early, previously cast, vote. that means, in general, there are exceptions, but in general,

the vote that is still to come is, likely, to be same-day voting. people who turned out on election day, and cast their vote today. it creates a bit of a dynamic in the flow of information out of the county tonight and, as we put these vote totals together. again, earlier vote totals, likely to be more favorable to the democratic candidate, delayed her vote totals, likely to be more favorable to the republican candidate. as you can see here, it is too early to call, with 42% of the vote in. steve, in terms of where the voters in from, and those dynamics who have been describing over the last hour, it seems to be, basically, what you are saying, is in heavily republican places, walker is doing better than he was doing in november, and in heavily democratic places, warnock is doing better than he did in november. >> we are seeing it, and we are starting to get more. you can see a lot of red here. the vast majority of counties, and georgia, will be

republican. many of them are small, rural, and we are starting to get more of the complete count from those smaller counties, just in terms of having a direct comparison to november. here is one where we think we have all of the vote here. franklin county,, again you see walker crushing warnock here, but the question is, out of that compared to the november general election? here, you see walker finishing two points, unchanged better than he did in november. warnock, finishing at the same level he got in november. again, a tiny county, but this is the kind of thing that walker needs to replicate in franklin county, after a bunch of counties fit this profile across the state. here's another at the other end of the state, again, very small here, but you do see walker running a little less than two points better than he did in november. again, these are small counties but he has to do this, one after the other. we are not seeing this all over, i should say. there are some exceptions, to

this. ben hill county, again, small, republican, we think we have the vote in, here, it is, actually warnock has done little from, november. and walker, who is basically flat. you're not seeing it everywhere, but you are seeing it in more counties, more republican rural counties that are in, you see walker act, with a few ticks above what he got in november. that is an ingredient he absolutely needs tonight. again, the other ingredient walker needs to have is, it would help him to improve. he will lose these counties, all of those in blue, right now. we expect him to ultimately lose. there's a question about fayette county here, but the key will be, is there a place like cherokee county? we talked about this before, we don't have new votes since we checked in. pulling county, another one, that will be huge. take a look, walker got 61% of the vote here in november. kemp got close to 66 here, in november. this is with the early vote in the county. how much will walker be able to

improve on that as the same day vote discounted? that is a critical question. again, if you look at the media, it lay into metro area. this is an interesting one. again, one of those, if you went back ten, 20 years, i think george w. bush carried this county around 40 points, in 2004. in the general election, warnock came within three points of winning the county. this is 125,000 people, just south of atlanta, and you are looking at the early vote in the county, with warnock sitting at 59%. this is one, in my mind, is a bellwether. if democrats are getting -- if that early turnout, that early voting success that democrats were touting, really, ends up to reflect in a shift of the results of this county. this is the place i had my eye on at the start of the night. could warnock actually win this county could? he flipped this county?

if he were to do that, it would represent significant progress, not just in favor, but in this population, richmond sure what manta area. since november, i think we just got the henry county voigt in earlier. this is another biggie. an atlanta metro area, another county to his view on a political journey. a used to be, not too long ago, a core republican county. you can see that warnock at 64% of the vote here, in the election. we have the early vote in, he's running more than ten points, warnock is better. as the same day vote comes in, this number will come down, but what walker needs for this warrant number to come all the way down, to 63.8%, or less. again, that is the variable in metro atlanta right, now what will happen when that same day vote comes in. in the rural parts of the state, there are encouraging signs for walker, but the rural parts of

the state alone will not win this. if he's going to win this election, he will need to show progress in metro atlanta, and in those vote producing counties. the question there is, what will the same-day look like? >> steve, i should tell you, we just got some reporting from the atlanta journal. they are reporting that fulton county officials are telling them to expect all early, and absentee vote to be counted in fulton county by ten, and all of the votes to be done by midnight. i don't know what that exactly tells us in terms of when we get a call on the, lately will be here, but it's at least that. >> one of the things is clear, i think, this early in the night. it's a close race. you know, just to take a step back, without knowing the outcome and what, essentially, a coin flip situation, when you look at some states that trump had won and, then went to biden, then you look at what happened to this last midterm, pennsylvania, arizona, michigan,

we see across the board, democrats made gains. arizona is a remarkable situation, where they won all of the state races. they won the whole slate in arizona. in michigan, a sweep, in pennsylvania, gubernatorial and senate. not the case in georgia. republicans had a good day on election night in georgia, with the exception of -- raphael warnock has worked, in defiance, of political gravity. they pulled the rest of democrats back down, in a state that was able to buck some trends that happened otherwise. it is a testament to what a remarkably talented politician rafael warnock has been, and as a senator, that we are now in an election for, in the span of two years. a guy who never ran for office before, in a state this closely divided. what he has been able to do as, let's be clear, not playing the role of a joe manchin, or a kyrsten sinema on the national stage. when he does performative lee pick fights with the democratic party.

staying very true to, what i think, would be fairly characterized as those core progressive values as a senator, from a dead center swing state. he is pulling off a remarkable feat of political magic, thus far, in his very young, and early, career, without even knowing what happens. >> in substantive terms, they do those bipartisan rankings of senators, and i think he is considered to be 18th most bipartisan senator. but, he has also been a full-throated champion of voting rights, and abortion rights, and other causes. >> and on the big issues of the democratic agenda, he has been a steady vote. >> his big deal was the insulin bill. >> the bipartisan senate scorecard and has become kind of funny. you get to be 17th now and, he's proud of saying that in georgia, which he should be saying but, 17th most but partisan senator but, they don't do anything. they are scoring two or three

votes in the year, to get them to that. 25 years ago, to be the 17th meant that you did business across the aisle all the time. and they were. there was 80% of them who were very, active, across the aisle. now, it is such a rare outcome that these statistics are a lat. it's just a joke. it is nice that he can go to georgia and say, on the 17th most bipartisan, but, also, he is more liberal than 90% of the democratic senators of the generation. >> that is why it's a magic trick. this, to me is, why it's in a crescent seat. what he has shown is, in his voting agenda, he has been liberal, and progressive, in his tone, and in his affected, favor ability ratings, and, down the line, 50/50 state, a state that veered republican last election, he has stayed above water, and defied the political gravity, through a

tremendous amount of political wherewithal. >> votes cast that last election, remember, had three names on the board. one of, them being a kind of libertarian candidate. those voters, you would think, would be more likely to tip to the republicans, certainly would if it were not herschel walker. but, what that means, is to get that little, i think, one and a half percent on those votes that were available, that is a harder grab for senator warnock, and then it is for herschel walker. it's harder for him. >> the bigger political story, and we don't have the results, but the margins he is running up. again, i remember 2004, being from the other side. the margins he runs in these counties, some of the fastest changing counties in the country, along with maricopa, and some counties in arizona that you've been talking about. that will be the enduring opportunity for joe biden when, he runs again. >> previously, republican stronghold counties in georgia. >> when biden won, i think all

of the democrats felton danger to. he played raffensperger, and camp, made a choice. they didn't make the choice of the walker backers. they went against trump, and that is how they had a good night. that is how they defy the national press. walker, on the other side of that saying goodbye. >> just what you are saying is the reason that democrats want to move georgia up. georgia is one of those states. arizona, and georgia, for a long time, are states that democrats have their eyes on since, the early 2000, as places they could play. north carolina is another. but one reason they would love to move georgia earlier in the presidential primary calendar, is because it has been a real statement opportunity. let's not forget, the other senator is a democrat. there are two statewide elected democrats in that state. candidate quality, as we reported earlier, democrats could not have had a better year in, terms of picking their candidates. shapiro is an excellent candidate. they just have excellent candidates. i think that warnock is one of the best of the new democratic

stars. he is the pastor of the most prominent church in atlanta. dr. king's church. he is a known quantity, from savannah, a lifelong georgian. you could not have built a better candidate from a kit. and, as a senator, he has been picture-perfect. we talked about this at the break earlier, but his discipline level? hi. very hard to get an interview with him. extraordinary, he is a very disciplined man. so, i think part of the problem republicans have as you see it and what steve is saying. they can only win in these rural places. they can only win with non-college white voters. all of the cities, including college educated white voters, those belong to him. >> that is why we are watching, so closely, the swing counties, to the extent that there are some, and the counties that are in transition, because that will be, especially with warnock, targeting republican, some targeting swing voters so explicitly. that will be a big part of the

story. former president obama, campaigning for senator warnock in atlanta last week, making national news when he did it. in part, because of the way that the former president talked about herschel walker at that event. >> since the last time i was here, mister walker has been talking about issues that are of great importance to the people of georgia. like whether it is better to be a vampire, or a werewolf. this is a debate, and i must confess, i was had myself. when i was seven. what >> well president obama was invited to the campaign trail for his preferred candidates, senator warnock, it is also notable that the current president, joe biden, and last president, on all trump, pointedly were not

invited into georgia to campaign for their respective favorites. now, if it will be docked up goose, deciding which former president gets to have a role olympic election like this, we will need some help figuring that out. luckily, our colleague, stephanie ruhle, has the professionals to ask. >> indeed i do. ducked up goose aficionados, here. i'm joined by our new colleague, former white house press secretary, jen psaki. our colleague, and friend, simone sanders. host of simone on msnbc, and peacock, and former rnc chair, michael steele. since you were the last to work for our current president, what do you think of the fact that neither president biden, or former president trump, had been on the campaign trail, physically, for either of these candidates in a hugely important race? >> when you are a candidate running a senate race, you decide who will help you get more voters out. clearly, both candidates decided, the sitting president, and the last president was not helping them.

it is not more complicated than that. i will say, president biden, who i know better than former president chomp, he is somebody who raised a lot of money, that is what he did, if he gets a 54 senate seat, will tell you i, don't think he cares that much about whether he's invited to georgia or not. this is also common, historically. the most popular person on the campaign trail, in the first midterm election for president obama was president clinton, not obama. he could not go to a lot of places. it's harder to be precedent. i think i've talked to the white house about it i'm, not worried about them being invaded, they just want to see 51st seat. >> former president trump is the one who selected herschel walker. that is his boy. yet, trump was happy to raise money for herschel walker, though not much actually went to him. trump's own super pac kept it but, he didn't go to georgia. >> he didn't. he wanted to go to georgia, and he threatened to go to georgia on a number of occasions.

i think you saw, more so, from the campaign itself that herschel walker, directly, in conversation with the president, saying it would not help at this time for him to be there. to which they said, that reality is true for someone like herschel walker, or the former president who's on top popular, as it is for a sitting president, who may not be as popular. the difference is, really, there isn't much. the bottom line is, they've raised the money. at the end of the day, to be honest with you, they don't need you to come into the stadium. if you get to send this out on an email, or letter, that's good. >> there's a difference to. donald trump was radioactive to literally everyone that he handpicked in these primaries. many did not survive in the general election. these democratic candidates, they're running on what democrats got done in many of these places. talking about the work, not necessarily, president biden. so, look, at the end of the day,

georgia's, as one democratic strategist text me, google georgia. president obama coming in, the next day, which is a friday, there is an 18% increase of people coming out to vote, from before previous days of early voting in the state. they saw that. >> they saw that in the general? they saw those numbers when they brought in president obama during the general. there was an uptick in people early voting, an uptick in people calling, and saying they want to volunteer, so that kind of know it worked, and he's a closer. that's what he likes to do as well. so, they brought him in to be a closer. >> he served this purpose. so, you have president biden cash issue. so, for the republicans, president trump will get you the cash, she will keep most of, it but he will get it to you,

then there are other people who will come in, based on the cavalcade of senators, and former governors. some current governors, running down to help herschel walker, in place of. >> but obama only had one message. herschel walker is not a serious candidate. >> that is exactly how we, one of the campaign ads to, closing one for warnock and, outside groups, is where they, basically, used herschel walker's words over, and over again, and had voters react to it. it's like when something is self destructing, you move out of the way. so, strategically, that is what the democrats did. look here, is the craziness of what he said. watch his words, and that's what you heard president obama do there as well. >> it sounds like the one and only steve kornacki has breaking news of the board. >> steph, thank you. i do believe that steve has something. what do you have? >> we do. let me go back to the statewide, and show you again. we have to vote tell you, we're not, could be the gusty wind

coat by six points. we've been talking about cherokee county, one of those big, republican, vote producing counties, where walker underperformed brian kemp significantly in november. we don't have more from cherokee county, but we have some big size counties, very much of that cherokee mold here, in terms of what they represent, politically. take a look. number one, we have all votes now in coney county. we said this was a very republican county, the highest concentration of weight voters with college degrees. demographically, if you look at the november general election, what group was walker lacking the most with, relative to camp white voters with college degrees? that seems to be where there was the most reluctance among republican voters to vote. so, we got all the vote into county, we can compare it to november, and what you can see is, walker did go up, by about

1.3 points, but warnock went up as well. he went up by 1.4 points. there was a large, libertarian vote in this county. a lot of people, republican friendly voters, who just could not pull the lever for walker. you would assume, when you look at a number like that. so, actually, walker is up here, but so is warnock. this is awash for walker. remember, this is the exact kind of -- this is going to get size. this is the kind of county walker wants to run north of 70%. remember, he doesn't need to get to the camp levels in these counties, the can't levels enough to win statewide, but he needs to get closer. he probably needed 70%. if you had asked us campaign to design a good night, i think he would've wanted to be at 70% in this county. this is a wash. when he gets out of coney, compared to the general election in november, it is awash. he did not make up any ground. another county, quite similar,

high concentration of white college educated voters, wealthy, very republican, a place where walker lagged, relative to governor kemp in a general election. november, glynn county. coastal georgia here, and we have just about all of the vote in from glenn county. you can see, walker winds at 61, 39. that is actually less than walker won this county by in the general election. he needs to be doing better than he did in the general election, and instead, he's finishing right now and there's a few, more votes to come. he's going to go under the november general election. if you look, right, now they're running at only 83%. right now, and glenn county, 83% of what it was in the november, general election,. some of these core, rural, republican counties we've been showing you, you're looking at 90, 95% of the general election level.

so, what you see in a county county what you see in the handy, is they are very similar in a way to cherokee county, to forsyth, to places that walker needs a night on, that we've teed up. there it is, in glenn county, it looks like herschel walker will finish short in glenn county of his november number. he needs to be north of it. if you are the walker campaign, and you see these two counties, the question was there was a lot of republicans who voted for brian kemp, who are not comfortable voting for herschel walker. would they show up? this turnout level suggests, many of them maybe didn't. if they did show up, would they vote for walker? again, this is suggesting, he did not make up. look, he ends up less than his november 2022 level here. he ends up less than that in the runoff, and warnock ends up making up, gaining, 2.1 points

here and a, korea public and county. if you're the walker campaign, there's good news in these areas. we got both complete and, for both, those are not good numbers for the walker campaign. there's a place like cherokee county, so much in a place like forsyth county, so much in a place like paulding. we've shown those early vote numbers, but we have nothing else. we still have to see, in terms of being a portants, potentially, of the walker campaign, those are concerning numbers we showed you. >> let's go back to warnock headquarters are. from jason, johnson there, professor of politics, and journalism. of course, an msnbc contributor. it is great to see you, jason. we have a squeak or, or at least, as far as we can tell at the headquarters. what is a confidence level like with the warnock folks?

>> it is uncharacteristically confident. i am not used to democrats. they won't say that publicly, but behind closed doors, most people here seem to think, rafael when. they think he's building on the lead from election night. and they think the fact that the weather's been bad the past few days we'll work in his faith favor. rachel, let me point this out. . i have been no-less for how poultry their responses from the warnock people. >> jason, i know you've been looking into this while you've been there, but is that this isn't a demographic terms, not just the story of black voters, white voters. georgia is a diverse state and one of the things that were not campaign has done, notably, and in contrast to the walker campaign, is they have focused on meeting communities of color, and their materials, another

languages, another things that can help them at different types of demographic, and racial lines. what has that been like with the campaign and, do they feel like that expenses paying off? >> it's part of the strategy for the state dems all along, and with brad raffensperger. but, it has continued throughout the warnock campaign. they've got materials in mandarin, in korean, in spanish, they have so many different materials as a part of metro magical, beaufort highway, some call it the silk road, latino, ai community people there, they have people on the streets, and all of those areas, for weeks. they have campaign materials, they have a viral twitter post, earlier today, about a group of young arp women, who are going out to a korean barbecue. they have materials and korean. people there were convinced to vote for warnock because, oh my gosh, he rents materials in our language. that's an impressive change.

you're right, it's not black and white and georgia and anymore. it's the colors of the rainbow. i think the democratic party has found out, that is the key to success in this race. >> jason johnson, professor of politics and journalism, and msnbc contributor. keep talking to folks from the campaign, we will take any until we can get from you. this looks like it may be a long night, but we'll get back to you. thank you. >> thank you so much. >> as the vote counts keep coming in, we will go live to a reporter who is checking in on the voters there. we continue to watch the vote come in from across the state of georgia, just over the 50% mark in terms of the total number of vote. that is in a 53% of the vote in this race, between incumbent democrat, raphael warnock, and his republican challenger, herschel walker. it is too early to tell, but alas, the night is young. stay with us. with us kevin, where are you?! kevin?!?!?.... hey, what's going on? i'm right here! i was busy cashbacking for the holidays with chase freedom unlimited.

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the polls close in the great state of georgia, with 56% of the vote in. this race is too early to call. look out tightness this. 56% of the vote, that is how tight it is right now. too early to call, and it looks like we will be watching this until the very end. with a republican herschel walker's in georgia, it was talking to just a couple of people at the warnock

headquarters, over the course of our coverage tonight. what is the atmosphere like it walker headquarters? >> rachel, i think steve just outlined in some of those counties there, where walker is not just meeting the mark. i was messaging, and literally just the last minute with, a source who was a walker ally here. he tells me the hope from the herschel walker side of this is that there will be lighter democratic turnout in fulton and dekalb county. in order to pull off a win, they need to see later democrat turnout in those key democratic counties. of course, we don't know how many outstanding ballots is in the greater metropolitan area here. let's be frank. there isn't optimism coming in tonight from herschel walker allies. so, the fact that there is reason to not be pessimistic at this point, is notable in itself. it's a message to get another source tonight to look up, he was back there, drinking a beer. i message him to say, how many beers until we know the results? he said, it looks like it will

be several. we are looking into reality that, tonight, herschel walker -- there was very little reason to be encouraged, coming in. it was instructing over the course of a little more than a year candidacy. it is just over this weekend, we are talking with cheryl parsons, a person who came forward, and sat down on the record, and in the interview, in which she alleged, over the course of a five-year relationship with, herschel walker, recently, they have detailed one particular episode, in which they allege that herschel walker, putting their hand on his chest, is attempting to puncher. that was heading into election day here, and in this runoff. was that more notable, because there wasn't any pushback from his campaign. they had five days to respond to these allegations, and he chose not to. so, instead, they relied on the likes of governor brian kemp,

who is trying to convince them to come out here. not on the basis of herschel walker's character to note, and they would offer up, we called, good things about herschel walker. instead, he focused, and made the case to georgians, to vote for herschel walker because he made the case, and it would be worth it to them to have a republican partner up on capitol hill. rachel? >> it sounds like the strategy of the campaign, headed into the runoff, is essentially to strip herschel walker away from the candidate, and it is the generic republican figure, who republican voters could get behind, kind of regardless of the specifics of him. so, it sounds both cynical, but maybe smart. >> it's why you saw the likes of lindsey graham, tim scott, jon kennedy, and is coming over the campaign here. in the more rural parts of the state, northern georgia here, in the closing days, it was up

in capitol hill, and it was a big steve who's right, and chronicling over the last day, this is coming over the exit polls from the general action, last month. it is just 30% of georgians, and it is good judgment. it is just 30% of voters. the herschel walker campaign, and allies, are realizing and with herschel walker is a person, they just had a year to do so, and the man himself did nothing to help them on that argument. >> fascinating. msnbc's reporting live from herschel walker's campaign headquarters, they will be counting down, beer by beer, hour by hour, and they are coming back to you. let's go back to steve kornacki, where, obviously, where they have that vote coming in? >> it is a big picture here first, and this is what we are talking about earlier in the night. earlier, they were looking at

that big lead, and they will start getting all of those, votes all of those same days in particular, with the small republican counties. we are seeing a lot of these small republican counties that are now completely reported, under close to getting to completely reported. the good news for herschel walker is an exciting number he got november. just as critically, maybe more critically, the turnout level from these rural counties, is a general election, where we look at our spreadsheet, here is very high, with a lot of these core republican counties. walker has been chipping away, and in november, we were watching the flow of the vote, and it was ahead of warnock would be caught. what this is doing, as the smaller, republican, rural counties fill in, it is accentuating the importance for democrats of the poor atlanta metro area. this is why warnock is in an early tally. this is a lot of tallies released, as we saw, in

realtime, and they release their mail vote on big giant batches. these counties tend to be slower, and with the election vote. there is very little election vote, it has been tallied out, with the atlanta metro area, except we did just get all of the votes in from one of these counties. i think this may be rockdale county, and all of the voters in an rockdale county. this is one of those counties that, two decades ago, george w. bush was winning this county by 20 points in 2004. tonight, raphael warnock won with more than 75%. to think significant about this. number one, in the general election, warnock's numbers are up. it's up two and a half points. 2.2 points. walker's number is down. 0.6 points. this is, exactly, just in terms of the result in this county, what warnock's campaign wants to see, in every one of these core democratic counties.

they want to take the numbers, and with walker's number in november is coming down. in the one county, it is complete now in the atlanta metro area. so, i think, just a significantly, talking about the turnout here. i'm looking at these rural, republican counties, with the turnout level, where we see 93, 94% of the november turnout. within rocktown, it is 91%. so, not quite as high as you are seeing, and it is close it is improving this number. the walker campaign, i think, they're encouraged rightly so, on what is being seen in rural georgia tonight. one key variable in the county areas, where one of the keys is the election day vote. this blob of blue, that you see, right here. we now have one county, where we see the election day vote, we have the whole vote in, and in this one county, democrats

got exactly what they were hoping to get. the question is, can the trend continue for them in these other counties, in the immediate atlanta area? >> it was walker headquarters, with the republicans, and they were hoping with fulton, and dekalb county, in particular. so, we don't have enough vote in, and they will say anything meaningful about what the overall vote turnout is going to be there, yet do we? >> we have almost nothing in from dekalb county. i'm showing you here. this is dekalb county, actually, who produced a larger plurality for raphael warnock in november, then fulton county did. the cab is smaller, population, weinstein fulton, and it is looking in november, if you check that margin for warnock, over walker, in dekalb county. it is a lot of votes is still to come, and dekalb county, and

nothing is reported in fulton county. what has happened, is we show you, they put out the early vote. 75, 7:10 pm, and now it is the vote by mail. so, you can see that warnock leads here, again, overwhelmingly, with the most democratic friendly votes. i think they, are at last check, something about three, or four precincts in fulton county. there's about three or four precincts in fulton county, where we've got the election day vote. if rockdale is any kind of omen for how the atlanta metro area is going to go for democrats, i think that they will be satisfied with that turn out, and the fact that warnock improved on as november showing. if they can replicate that in fulton county, replicate that in gwinnett, and dick cobb, i think that would offset what walker has managed to do, in the rural areas. that's a big if, and those republican votes producing counties north of the immediate atlanta area, it will have something to say to.

>> i do feel like, and correct me if i'm wrong, but looking at the cab county, at the overall georgia number right now, we have over 50%. it's close, between the two of them. it's like 50.1, to 49.1. that has to worry democrats, i think. 50.2, 49.8, 60% in. but, in dekalb county, we are expecting 300,000 votes out of that. that is a county where warnock won by 70 plus percent. >> this is the difference between a democratic victory in georgia and, a republican one. the democratic one depends on a much smaller number of counties, producing a much larger share of the vote. >> nothing is it out of the cab yet. >> yes, out of the cab. i think what we're asking that question, we have a little more out of cherokee county. we were 39% of the vote, now, we are up to 60% of the vote,

and again, the importance of this one is even more than when we started talking at the start of tonight. what walker is getting out of the rural areas. to set the stage here at, this is what walker got november. this is the single largest republican vote producing counting in georgia won, of the biggest in the country, this is what cam caught. again, if you're walker, you want to land tonight at 70%, or better in cherokee county. with this latest update, you can see, we are now getting some same-day vote in there. walker gets close to the level he had in 2020 in november. >> if i can interrupt you for a second, we have a change in the characterization of the race. previously, it had been described to this point in the evening as too early to call, but officially, now, the decision desk is calling this too close to call. you see, was 61% of the vote in, herschel walker, not only in the league this point, 60% in, it is too close to call, rather than too early. back to you steve, sorry.

>> i think we are seeing at the chemistry you can see what's happening here. in forsyth county, this is these two. cherokee, forsyth, number one, number two, it was the statement that is the exact same storyline here for walker. 64.8 is what he caught november, and it is 68, 69 in the forsyth county. there is a lot of same-day votes to come, from forsyth county. the opportunity exists on paper, and in cherokee with walker to move up. we'll see how he does, we'll see how those votes start breaking out, but those opportunities are there for him in those counties. we're talking a minute ago, it is for dekalb, and colton. by far, fulton produces the biggest democratic plurality's in the state. democrats have a lot to come out of both of those can to these. but, it was in terms of there

being a lot of small, rural, republican counties. there are a lot of small, rural, republican counties, but many of these are good size counties to. a big chunk of those voters to come. actually, there is now more to come in from houston county. never mind, this is the last that had come in and now we're at nearly 9% of the vote. we see herschel walker here, ahead of raphael warnock. this is a big county, some same-day vote to come here, so that walker advantage could grow a little bit. there are sizable counties here, but this is where valdosta is. deep south georgia, this is all complete. warnock is up, walker is up, this is, basically, awash relatives in november. the one thing that troubles democrats about this result is, while this is on par, essentially, with what happened in november, this is one of those counties have, significant black population in this county, and if the run

office in january of 2021, when they defeated kelly lafleur it is on 12 points. this isn't one of those counties where the runoff, the last runoff that warnock was involved in, you can see that the democrats really succeeded in driving black turnout, and then limiting the republican victory margin. you can see, tonight, walker did not build on his november number, but that is not good for him. but, he didn't fall back to a leveller number, either. that means a didn't increase the burnout that offsets republican strength in this county in, the way that they were hoping to. so, those are some spots here. we can talk about the cab, and fulton, it will be crucial to warnock if he pulls that off tonight. they are higher population areas in red georgia, as well. this is where republicans are not displeased with what they're seeing. you can see is, a matter of fact, what we're going through. walker, as we continue to get

updates throughout the state here, a lot of these republican counties going in now. it is happening faster in november. this is taking place in a truncated schedule tonight, then it didn't november. so, this is a pattern we saw where raphael warnock jumped out to the giant lead, on the strength of those early vote reports from the big counties. he did take the lead, he has a lead for a significant amount of time on election night, to november, and what the article came around two's within election day vote, in the metro atlanta area, these are some of the last votes to be reported out, from some of these counties, here, in metro atlanta. it is going into rockdale county, and i think that their hopes could, it really, beyond metro atlanta, delivering for them, and with the sea and rockdale county, they want to see, and the rest of these counties. they will have a bit of a gap

here, to make up. there are votes on paper for them to do it with. rockdale suggests, the path certainly exists, but they're doing what they did in november. they're getting the numbers in from the republican friendly parts of the state. and is building an advantage on the tally board. >> it both looks too close to call, and is, technically, too close to call joining us now, congressman nikema williams. her district, her congressional district, includes most of atlanta. she shares a democratic county of georgia, which means, this is a stressful night to be congresswoman nikema williams. congresswoman, thank you, we will see you here tonight. >> just a little stressful. >> this is looking like a squeak or. the poll said, heading in, this would be very tight. most poll showed incumbent, democratic senator, raphael warnock, with a small lead. but in every, case within the margin of error of those polls. we know, mathematically, this will be a tight race. now, we see it unfold.

what do we see this based on? >> what they're doing is georgia they're not blue, they're not read, or periwinkle. we are a true, battleground state. that is why we left it on the field today. to make sure that our voters turned out, and it is so important to stress, early voting, staying in line, once you get mine. it is every vote that counts. it is now continuing to vote. >> in terms of republican messaging tonight, are we hearing from them that they were surprised, and pleased, by the same day voter turnout? they are expecting that that will map neatly into a partisan advantage for the republicans, and that the democratic vote will have been heavily towards early, and absentee voting? do you see things as that neatly bifurcated? or, is the democratic party, also, seeing good turnout today, same day votes, among

democratic-leaning voters? >> if we look at this race, that is still too close to call, it was there in the fighting five, it was there an atlanta, that is fulton, dekalb, clayton, when those numbers come in, you will see a huge bomb for senate in warnock. the people that i represent, in the fighting fifth, understand what was at stake today, and it will be best poised to represent georgians for six years in the senate. so, i am sitting here, waiting, just like we did in 2020. we know that these same counties gave president biden the edge. the first time in years that we went blue for a presidential candidate, and i think we will pull it out again tonight, as we continue to count every vote. we had to go up against huge hurdles, had to sue the state. the republican party, just to get saturday voting, already, in a compressed time period.

voters stood in line, they did what they needed to do, and now we need to count the votes. >> congresswoman, it's chris hayes, i'm curious given the compressed time scale, for weeks, down from nine. and also, the fact that you run along campaign, then it's election day, you have to do it again. the last few weeks are different, before the first election day, so is there a change in messaging, it was more of the same. >> we're talking to every mortar, and with the center of the political universe, once again. so, we have the congressional black caucus pack, georgia coming out, and i talk to my colleague from indiana, representative from his field team, in georgia, and we had an advantage, this time, having people come into georgia, as we continued to lead the country, being the center of the political universe. i do not want to be in the

situation many more times, and with every opportunity that we can, would make sure that georgians would be fit to lead us in the u.s. senate, and that is why we did everything we could today, leaving it all on the field for senator reverend raphael warnock. >> don't let anybody tell you anything different, congressman williams. everything is good for you, even when it's an overdose of adrenaline week, after week, after week, election, after election. i'm convinced it's good for you. it will be a long night, but we will be here with you. thank you congresswoman, great to have you here. >> thank you rachel. >> congresswoman williams. if i don't mention a four, she shares the democratic party of georgia, as well as holding a crucial seat in georgia. you know, there is a difference between understanding the math, and feeling the momentum. i do feel, even though the map said, this will be a tight race, it did feel like warnock had a lot of momentum heading in. knowing it's at least looking

like a squeak or does feel like the democrats are back foot a little. >> how can you feel any momentum in a campaign that wasn't happening? herschel walker shut down. for days. the huge crowds with the walker of this? no, there was none. >> i will remind everyone that in 2017, and the state of alabama, i just looked it up, the candidate on the republican side was judged growing more. a guy who is credibly accused of being a pedophile. he got 48.3% and, doug jones, who was a literal civil rights hero, got 50. it's always a squeak or. every purple state that's purple. big blue cities, and rural voters with, a lot of white voters, that concentrate. you add up the big blue cities, and the rural states, and every state is like this. >> i think the question you get to, which i think one of the

key narratives, it is hundreds of republicans in georgia, and with men, women, black, white, who would be plausible, better candidates for senate. they would seem to be better senators than herschel walker. there is no reason for herschel walker to be the state of georgia to represent the state in the u.s. senate, other than the fact and it was the apprentice. >> i think we are all covering a nail-biter. >> so, it is so tribal now. it is a large swath that just vote for the are. there's a lot of momentum, to. but, he want to squeak or. if you count raffensperger, they were counted it in the best three times, and trump still trying to steal it. there were still lots of landslides, to try to steal close ones. >> ever untold stories he. at this point, the racially

polarized voting, the partisan voting, is still entrenched. they could've nominated a lump of sake mash photos as the republicans. it doesn't matter. if it is a republican, there is disciplined. if you are judge roy moore and, they don't care. >> it is just a candidate who's not acting out as a candidate. it is a very famous football star. they're wearing the red jersey here, and it is the recognition of this. even the man who lives and the wrong words is credibly accused of all of these terrible things. they matter here to. it is not the republican case was for him. >> both of these things are true. these are the twin pillars of american politics. it is, structurally, they ruled

everything, every party starts with 45%, and it is rural for sure. so, this tiny sliver of margin is 40,000 voters who said, i can't do it for herschel walker, or, they say, i will do it for herschel walker, and -- >> i want divided government. >> that's it. they determine. >> they do make it harder to vote. a law that was based for georgia, they did pass the voter suppression law. >> it is senator warnock, and his republican challenger, herschel walker, at this hour, too close to call. it is about 56 points between them, 16% of the vote in, and we get the numbers with steve kornacki, right after this. right after this ase freedom unlimited. i earn 5% on our cabin. hello cashback! hello, kevin hart! earn big time with chase freedom unlimited with no annual fee. how do you cashback?

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by choosing treatment, you choose family, your career and your life on your terms. choose change, california, and find medically proven treatment options at choosechangeca.org. again. when we went to commercial, the lead in this race appeared to be held by republican challenger, herschel walker, while we were on the commercial break, the league has flipped that senator raphael warnock appears to be in the league, just from under 24,000 votes. that must mean, something new came and. you can see on the upper right hand corner of your screen. 73% of the. 73% of the, vote now in georgia, in this race. it is too close to call. what came in that flipped the

lead here? >> the talk about dekalb county, and dekalb county released its early vote. at least, in november, dekalb county produced this democratic plurality of any county in georgia. this contains inside of that perimeter, and we see raphael warnock, just north of 90%. this is how dekalb ended up looking, in november. again, a massive, massive democratic margin. that is what this county represents, typically. a number of democrats that we would expect to get out of the early vote and dekalb. we think, there may still be some early morning votes, some more mail ballots in the bulk of it. it is the same day vote and dekalb county, and will not be all as democratic and, will be democratic. so, we will see the number in your head here, warnock, his high-water, mark will be 90 16 and a cab. he was, and finished, at 80 43

in november. he wants a number to be higher. i think 85%, or higher, coming out of the cab. it will be good news for warnock's campaign, and it will be a big chunk of the vote from dekalb county. we also got another batch of votes in who do what we are looking at into cobb is the early votes, now all in, and walker, again, are setting the number in here. it is 65 and a half percent of the early vote. this will be the high-water mark, this is where they will end up in november, and when all is said and done, it's with the cobb county. democrats have been talking about it, but these are their core counties. the biggest set -- here is the big missing piece, outside of what we saw and rockdale county. so, that is what was put. warnock is putback ahead of the statewide count, we get a lot of opportunity for him as the

election day vote comes in, the core atlanta, metro area. a couple others we can show you our significant republican counties, or most of the vote now is. in fact, all of the vote is in carol county. carol county, in the biggest republican vote producing counties in the state. this is one of the changes we have seen in georgia, over the last ten, 20 years, and we will show dekalb county a minute ago. the cop county was a red county. this would produce republican majority, significant republican majorities, and a list of republican counties in the state. when it used to be a republican county. now, the republican strength is no longer in the core atlanta metro, and it has shifted to this ring of counties. they have grown in population, a lot of them are on the periphery of the atlanta area. carol, being one of them. carol, one of the top ten

republican vote producing. we've got a quote, 69.7, but there are 60 86 november and with november. warnock is up 1.4 from where he finished, in november. it is essentially a wash, and we look at it, and we look at that gap. it is what cam did in this race. i think it is one of those counties, we want to be finished better with that. so, here's another one, floyd, not quite as big in northwest georgia. here, walker, with all the votes are in. warnock, is also, of nearly a point from november. they got some wild improvement out of floyd county, and they probably wanted a little more than that. you can go through them here, bardo county, you can take a look at cherokee, and a whole

county is one here. this is probably good news for walker, who's already ahead of his november level. it's only the election day vote that we can come in on the county, with an opportunity for walker to, perhaps, build on that. he needs to be running in a lot of these counties, at least that, and probably a few points ahead of how he did in november. again, you can see where democrats are considering their, in the atlanta metro counties. one other biggie that i think, we are now all in when it comes to the vote, is the doherty county. this is a larger share of black voters, of any county in the state. 70%. this were open in georgia's, and we can see, again, warnock actually goes up here, goes up 1.4 points from how he finished in november, walker actually down, 1.4. excuse me, 0.4, in november. this is one of those with good news for them there. on those levels it is, not quite as big as they were hoping for, but that is,

ultimately, a good sign to get marching into doherty county. the largest lecture of the vote, and again, you look statewide, and you can see that -- okay, yes, we have more cherokee. that's what happened. another batch coming in from cherokee county. remember, we are now up to 80% of the vote in cherokee county. it is a republican county in the state, and now this is significant. walker is running a point better than he did in the november general election. warnock is running two points in the county, in the november general election. walker continues to make progress but, they must make more progress with the 20% of the vote, still to come. the last time we checked, if you just look at the election day vote, that is what is being counted in cherokee. if we look at the election day

vote in this county, it is 76% of it. so, again, if you continue with that clip is 20% still to come, the opportunity is to build a number. to get north of 70, i think, at least, is to get out of cherokee. this is where kemp finished in november. he doesn't have to get to that level, but he needs to get higher than he is right now. where he is right now, his numbers an improvement from november, but warnock's number is also an improvement from november. it is more of an improvement then november. walker will have to pick that number up the even more. you can see that up there. >> 50 point oh, to 50 point oh. >> technically, it has moved, but we are looking at a 1612 vote difference between the two candidates here, statewide. so, they are trading jabs right now. i think you will see the basic dynamics. there's a lot of democratic votes that come in right here. there is still a lot of republican votes, in particular, to come from just outside of that core, atlanta, metro area.

so, if it's just flipped again, what county wasn't here? okay, a small republican county, coming in. again, flipping the lead there, statewide for walker. but, the big picture here, election day vote in, the atlanta metro area, and in terms of leads in these counties, walker, i think, is stepping it up a little bit with these big republican counties, joe side of the atlanta metro area. he is getting good numbers, but i think he needs great numbers from those counties tonight. again, the highlight tonight with the walker campaign with the rural georgia, you see those counties in south georgia, some counties in north georgia as well, and i think would be very good for herschel walker tonight. but, we need more, suburban counties here and, he will lead in the remaining election day

vote. something very big, i think, to offset what's coming here of metro atlanta. not sure why i clicked out of the state, but let's get back in. a 50/50 race, again, with 2000 votes right now. >> let me ask about the two counties that are great outward, looks like there are no results. is there anything to say about those counties? >> no, small counties. sometimes, it just takes time. the smaller counties, to, will often just wait a week, and reported all at once. i would say, one thing does remind me of the, speaking of time, is dekalb county. they said, we're waiting on the election day vote. they were, in november, one of the slowest counties to put out their vote. they basically reported it in a three hour period between ten and a -- pm, and 1 am. i'm just checking here in terms of where we are in the vote count, statewide. we are running about 15 minutes ahead of the pace we were at in november. so, maybe it will go a little faster here to, but it was 10 pm, to 1 am, their timeline for

the election day vote last time. maybe it will be more like 9 to 12, or something like that. the vote is coming in faster, statewide, and november. >> we do to get that reporting from earlier in the evening. the constitution reporting, in fulton county, which is atlanta, the single largest population center in the state, they're expecting early, and absentee vote at the top of this hour. and then, everything in that county to be counted by midnight. >> yes, i think we are looking at most of the early, and most of the mail out of fulton county. that same day vote, now, just waiting on that. the same day vote to, out of dekalb county. cobb county, as well, in november. they had the last substantial report on election night in november, was cobb county. it was changed a bit with it. >> we will keep a close eye on that, as these come in again.

this is with 49.9. we said it was too close to call but, we don't mean to prove it this emphatically. there you have it. it is a squeak or. it will be fascinating to see. alex wagner, our colleague here, and we knew the full setting was going to be tight. but it will be a tight race at this point. >> when it's just 50%, and 50%, that is a good indicator. when we look at steve kornacki on the big board, and these counties, i think we should not lose sight of this message, or less on, the georgia tells us about the rest of the country. because, what is happening is georgia's changing. what we see here in metro atlanta are coming in is, they are overwhelmingly democratic. it is a changing state. it is becoming dramatically less white. the big urban centers, metro savannah, metro atlanta, these are populations that are much less homogenous.

the people who identified as mixed race, asians, hispanics, this is the new georgia. there is a reason that you have both marjorie taylor greene, and raphael warnock, representing that state. this is a country that is changing. in some instances, resistance to that change, angry about that change. in other sides, they are embracing that change. excited to have representation for the first time. keep in mind, in the history of the senate, 2000 people have served the upper chamber. 11 of them have been black. so, let's not lose sight of the fact that, a, you have two black men running for the senate seat, would be, when you look at georgia, when you look at these counties, this is a state that changes like the country is changing. the fact that a split right down the middle is indicative of an america that is at an inflection point, demographically. that is a host of political thanks to, and conflict, and despair, and a lot of ways. georgia's expression of that.

>> i'm glad you said that. the reality is, one of our two political parties has built itself, for that future. so, you heard jason johnson, earlier tonight, talk about it. the democratic party, which is one of the veteran democratic parties in the country, we're running ads, including on youtube, inquiry and. they were running in language ads for asian americans. >> the enemies -- >> vietnamese! >> spanish. >> they understand that their base is the city's. they are much more diverse. and the suburbs that are much more diverse. they built themselves through that kind of future. the republican party has, essentially, become a white interest party. it is there and that strategy. they are still doing it. they're looking, where can we find more non-white college voters? we need to find things that will excite them, and they are cultural. they're all critical race theory, it's all book banning, and they're finding ways to dredge up more white voters, without college degrees,

because they are losing college educated white voters. white voters under 30, this is new. they are going democratic. they are going in the same direction as the rest of this democratic that is multi racial. they have the republican party at this point. it is trump's celebrity. >> it work tonight in georgia. >> i think it is unlikely, but it could. the reality is, you can't get better than that, and the country is only going to keep going in the same direction. >> georgia has the lowest percentage of the state since 1890. the people are in the 1890s, and we are in a different america. the attention, the division, is really an expression of that change. >> i think that's why, and i think that, maybe the, whole thing about candidate quality, the context of this real fight

over civilization, the other side, the republican side, it's fighting for what it is trying to hang on to, and that is an emotional appeal to the dark angels. but, the democratic party, the broader coalition that has assembled, in 2000, 2022, really, does represent reality. i think that is why it feels so violent, and is this reaching back. >> it is accidental. >> i think it's also worth noting, and i don't mean to sound too much of a partisan, in the specific way, but it's also worth appreciating that atlanta is the cultural capital of america right now. that atlanta is the hippest, coolest, best looking, most forward lay -- >> thanks tyler perry! [laughter] >> i mean atlanta is the color of the united states and a lot of different parts of the arts right now, and a lot of the creative economy. and you have that energy, to have that flowing into atlanta, to have atlanta be functional city, and where to have that national leadership role --

williams here with the congressman from that district, but from an atlantic district, but also the chair of the democratic party. and you see that swagger! you know what i mean? and you see that confidence. >> yeah! >> you see national democratic leaders, particularly black women leaders coming out of georgia, specifically coming out of atlanta, who are leading the country every other way, and that is because that city is sort of the pulsing, throbbing hearts of the country in terms of cultural and ideas. >> yeah. >> and -- i just think that has an important part to play in terms of how creative and forward -leaning that democratic party has been. >> and i will say was a somewhat from brooklyn, what hurts me to say -- it >> all, now just a! >> i would argue that atlanta's the capital black america. >> a lot of people say! that >> they're gonna argue with brooklyn is going to fight it! [laughter] we have hip-hop on our side. -- >> but atlanta, in the, science is the capital of the -- >> aisle play my -- role. >> some gotta play this, role. >> need to talk about the

nitty-gritty of the hip-hop -- [laughter] [inaudible] someone is a great deal about, it are a democratic senator -- claire mccaskill. clara, this is obvious is exactly what we want to do here for tonight. just go on and just tell us. because that in the 80s if you want in terms of hip-hop, and the way it as a -- >> yeah. yeah. >> [laughter] >> and -- and i could do motown, but i don't think i can to hear pop. >> it's all right, we love you. >> we want to talk to you because you are among us, the one that has been in this quicker senate races and who knows how this feels on nights that are so fraught, when is a legit tie. >> right. i've been talking to the folks in the back room, so to speak, all day about what the and what is going on. i think everybody needs to remember, when you talk a lot about about persuasion, about how ralph warnock, raphael warnock has done a great job on persuasion. but we haven't talked a lot about the difference between the two parties on getting out

the vote. and midterms, and especially runoffs, are all about getting out to vote! let me tell you to tails, the first as a democratic party -- robin out there who is sitting in five or $10, let me tell you where your money went. $32 million has been spent on the tv efforts in georgia. they've knocked on over 4 million doors in the last ten days to two weeks. today, alone, they had 6000 people out knocking on doors making sure that they were pulling people out to go about. now, let's look on the republican side -- we have a party that tells you you can't vote early, when a party that how you can't vote by mail -- you have a party that says you can't trust voting, that elections are rigged and fraudulent. and by the way, you could only vote in person, and that it was waiting for part of the day today. so the republican party has really shot themselves in the

foot by really discouraging people to fully participate in a way that is easiest for them in this election. and yes, it is as quicker, but i got off the phone in less than an hour ago, and people in the backroom say that they are still very much on track and feel very good about where this will end up for senator warnock. >> the democratic side is still expressing cautious within the past hour? they think it's going the way that warnock expected it to go? >> correct. the numbers they need to hit, and trust me when i tell you this: every county and every number they need in every county. so as they see counties come in, they are checking them off and there is no panic on the democratic side. yes, this is not going to be a run up way elections, but i would argue with chris hayes, who said i think earlier, that this was a swing state. this is not a swing state. this is a red state. this is not a state that has elected a lot of democrats in the last two decades statewide. so, i would say that this is a

red state and reverend raphael warnock is doing very, very well against obviously a -- candidate what problems and not just character. >> senator claire mccaskill, thank you very much, we await your white paper on the whole hip-hop war between brooklyn and the -- [laughter] >> i'll work on that! >> we're gonna send all of them in the station, it's gonna be great! [laughter] >> what we've been talking to clare mccaskill, we've also been watching the overall vote total for state of georgia to catch up, up, up, up. we just 80% across the state, it is too close to call, typically we've been watching the league flip back and forth within a percentage points between these two candidates. steve, what's coming in and what's outstanding? >> so just happened, dekalb county which are making famous tonight if it wasn't already famous, the rest of the early votes in the cab county is coming in. so there's two thirds of all

votes is in in dekalb. so again, this is the most deadly bill that you are going to get out of the most democratic finally county in georgia and so again, 90.8 in warnock. what did he end the november general? he got 84.3. so again, we will see again with the remaining vote which will most likely be same-day vote. we'll see how much walker is able to get close to that 14, how much warnock falls from that 90.8. but again, this is you know one of those core places that democrats are counting on. we are waiting on seeing devote from dekalb county. we are waiting for same vote from fulton county. we are starting now to get in some of the same day votes from cobb county. and i would note, it is interesting that while warnock leads the overall count here in cobb county, 62 to 38, and while he is running ahead of where he finished in this county in november, he got 60 -- 50 68 in november. he's 95 points from that right now. so, far the election day vote

match with the counting out right now in cobb county. so for the election day vote is preparing herschel walker 54 to 46% in cobb for what has been counted so far. so there is an opportunity for walker to improve, there is an opportunity here for walker to bring that warnock number down. again, he is going to need to. he doesn't want walker running any better than walker already did in the atlanta metro area in november. but those are major sources of outstanding same-day vote when that county is a major source of outstanding same-day vote. again, a lot of the counties right here in the immediate atlanta metro area. we are waiting on the same day vote, and then, again as we said, same day vote to -- the next layer of counties all around the immediate atlanta metro area, the republican counties that are waiting on the same day and a lot those two -- again, like cherokee county, can walk or get above 70%? like forsyth county, walker's gonna have to do better. you have 60 48 in november. you can plant more than that this time. with the remaining, vote it is

same david. can he get up there? that is the question. but democrats again, huge opportunity here in the immediate metro atlanta area, and for walker, it is going to take the numbers better than he is getting so far out of the court republicans, they republican counties right outside of atlanta. >> all right, we'll keep a close eye as these numbers still continue to come in, both statewide and as the amalgamation county by county. it is a real nail-biter in georgia tonight. senate election there, as you say, too close to call and boy is it! don't go anywhere, we will be right back! ♪ ♪ ♪

>> we're going live to georgia right now where we identify warnock headquarters is -- [laughter] >> is jason johnson, professor of politics and journalism at marquette university. jason, at the tell you that we are glad you are there because we'd be embarrassed if you are here. these are the ball being completely! [laughter] we have no discipline, we have no camera awareness, it's a complete mess right now! we're gonna slice wearing any minute! so after going to hand things over to you -- >> that's fine! >> so just host for warnock headquarters for now. >> so the energy here has changed immensely for about 20 minutes, it looked like herschel walker was in the lead, and there are playing a lot of gospel music. and that one optical it again, it once it's the eye and jay-z. so that's how the mood has changed!

it looks like -- it like a lot of people, and again, i've heard people from the campaign -- they're feeling very confident. they're waiting for the two big counties to really come in because at the end of the day, it's not the small counties that warnock has to win, it's the big ones. and he seems to be over performing what he did in november. so everybody here seems really enthusiastic and now that it is really dropped, so folks are gonna start partying! [laughter] >> can i ask, you it's great for me to ask, i'm not supposed, to but how are things getting their information? do they have us, on cnn, or some local news on? how are people receiving the information in the room that they are reacting to? >> so, there's a big cnn screen here. most people are on their phones and then you have some campaign staffers, believe it or not, kind of going throughout the room and answering peoples questions. that's what kind of interesting to me. -- in the campaign but it was like we have people in the room, coming everyone down, and keeping everyone happy. everybody's been getting onstage, has been giving updates as well. >> okay, it's been interesting. from our perspective at hq, at

msnbc, this is -- i mean the race is -- the latest flipping back and forth like every single time that you look at it. every single time someone or something new comes in, or with any sort of -- it is an absolute quick. that you had the heart of aj, said we'll be back with you! >> awesome! >> okay, let's go to steve who is absorbing a new information. steve? >> yeah, we got some more significant completed counties and now. three of them are democratic can counties. so this is bibb county, all of it now as you can see, this is a core democratic county but the key question for warnock is, how does this compare from november? so take a look here. warnock actually up 1.4 point from how he ran in this county, mid county. from november. walker's number is flat, actually down one tenth of a point. that's a positive sign for democrats. go over to the alabama -- muskogee, look at take a look here, warnock ran a 62.2% is,

that's where columbus. if he gets a four point tapper sent tonight. walker goes, up walkers numbers decrease a little bit. i know this is right on the margins but we are talking about an election on the margins here. warnock, remember, overall finished a point ahead of walker statewide. so any county that looks like this for the warnock campaign standpoint is an encouraging sign. he has increased his share of the votes relative to november, while walker has seen his share fall relative to november. also, we got all voted now in richmond county, again court democratic county, this is where augusta is. we see warnock, almost two point, 1.8 from where he finished in november. the walker numbers down about half a point. so these three counties here kind of spanning across amid georgia here all encouraging news for the warnock campaign to see those numbers. now, take a look up here: we keep talking about the sort of outer atlanta summer excerpts. take a look at all the vote now in barrow county. again, this is one of those bigger, not the biggest, but one of the bigger republican counties you are going to see

in georgia. and here, walker does seem improvements in terms of 68.8, it's what walker got in november. he improves it by almost two points tonight. keep in mind though, warnock number is also up a point relative to november. so walker really only with a net gain here about points when it comes to the margin. and again, when we're talking about these counties, you are talking about them -- dynamic that you saw that doomed walker in november, at least in terms of getting an outright win in november in finishing second. he ran a sofa behind brian kemp in these core publican counties. this is where walker was in november, this is where kemp was. walker in a county like this tonight probably wants to be getting closer to camp. he got a 7.7, probably was to be at 71, 72. so we're seeing all the votes come in there, we have almost -- almost all the voted from holden county. again, similar count here and the outer wing excerpts of atlanta here again walker winning it. was it over compared to november? it is up but the warnock number

is up to. and, that warnock number is it up more than the walker number is up. that is not a good sign for the walker campaign, and again, you compare that to how brian kemp did in paulding -- at 6%, he's gone along tonight baby under 62%. so we are still waiting on cherokee, this has been up all night. we're still waiting on forsyth. 62% of the vote is in. with walker needs are big numbers! and bigger numbers than he has been getting out of these counties here. because these are the biggest places where the republican vote left in the state right now. and again, overall right now you see warnock with that lead of 11,000 statewide. and stress, we are sitting on a lot of those here in this atlanta metro area. those votes that are still there in the atlanta metro area are probably democratic friendly votes. a lot of election day votes in fulton county, election votes in dekalb county, election votes in gwinnett county. --

it seems slightly republican, there are a lot there as well. but there's a lot of opportunity here for warnock in this course out of atlanta metro area. so -- identically out of, it but again i love thousand bose is the advantage for warnock right now. so we've been talking about all night, walker is just the same day comes and as these republican counties, he's got to get bigger numbers. >> steve, we're gonna go to ivan hillyard, the herschel walker in headquarters. can i just ask you a dumb ad question before we move on? few of these counties that you described the performance tonight as compared to performance in november as both candidates doing better. right? >> yes. >> so is that just a libertarian vote in split between these two candidates? >> yeah, and actually as an example -- you can see and very small print at the bottom of the screen here: that was a libertarian candidate, all over in november. got 2.1% of the vote statewide. so theoretically, there is room in any given county, we'll take cherokee as an example here.

oliver, and after one of the things that we saw in a lot of these a bigger republican counties with a lot of college educated voters, all over actually did better than he did in a lot of rural counties in the rest of the state. and i think that reflected the reluctance of a certain type of republican voter to in a place like cherokee county. they did what they turn, they voted for camp, they didn't want to vote democratic in this county, and it is a libertarian county in this election and that's why they got -- percent. here it opens the door for walker to 1.2 points tonight, relative to november, and for warnock right now to be gaining two points relative to november. because there is 3.2 that was sitting there on a libertarian line. so that's the thing for walker in a lot of these counties, it's not enough to hit a number into approved by a point or two, he's got to be improving for two, three, 45 points in these counties. so that i've been saying 70% is -- in cherokee county, and the way that things are going in other

parts of the state it may be more than that is what he would need to get out of here. and we've just been seeing rural georgia, these counties, and a bunch from south georgia earlier, some up in georgia as well, counties with large concentrations of non-college white voters, just become a huge part of the republican coalition in georgia, in the south, and nationally. i think you are seeing strong republican turnout, very good numbers for herschel walker, even relative to november. but when you start to get to the republican friendly counties where you have higher concentrations of college graduates, he is not so far making the kinds of leaps and gowns, and these gains, that you need to -- see or need to see, again relative to november. again we saw barack out, see another one here, cory pollack and for a number of college degrees here. chase oliver got 31%. it means that -- want to be moving up more than that in county like this. and again, let's just reset statewide and say --

wow! >> you've commences you've been talking, and it's sitting at 201 vote statewide right now 83%. >> it sounds like, if i'm reading between the, line stephen, it sounds like if you had to choose right now between whether you would rather be warnock or walker, you've probably rather be warnock -- >> and walker takes the lead in as walker takes away. [laughter] but given what's astounding, maybe that's how it's looking, but at this point and maybe very near the end of the night. >> i think the key right now is there is an expectation, that when you take a look at fulton county, how many times have we click on fulton county in the last hour and a half and we've seen a 55% in -- i think is an expectation of what the election day vote is going to look like in fulton county, but we haven't seen it yet. so we have and -- we don't actually know until we see it. we take a look at dekalb county. this one produced a better democratic -- than -- small population. so in both of these counties as an expectation here that the election day vote, while it

won't be as good for warnock as the early vote and the mail votes was, it will still be pretty darn good for him and i'll give him a pretty massive corollary, for that matter -- he can get some more out of wets county as well. there's enough sitting there potentially to offset what walker and now that he has a walker climbs up to 8100. the walker number is a diffuse number is coming in from all sorts of different counties as they finalize those tallies across the state. the warnock number is going to be much more the strength, much more concentrated in these big blue counties. is about 159 counties in georgia and in the eight general election, warnock county free within 30 of them. so again we had more votes statewide and herschel walker did. so for the warnock campaign, this is a very reminiscent of what we were watching in georgia on election night in november where again, we saw warnock jump out to that big lead earlier. walker had a lead i was looking at up my nose a few minutes ago.

longer hadley and the tally for more than two hours on election night. and it was not until the late, late in the night, very end of the night when you got the final election day votes and the final batch up mail ballots from cobb county. that's where warnock moves ahead of walker and ended up finishing 37,000 votes ahead of him. and again, you look at what is outstanding in fulton dekalb and some of those other places, and has ample opportunity for warnock to do the same here. it is a question of, you know, what does that both get reported out? it seemed to take a while. but that is when the pattern in georgia, those counties tend to take a while relative to the others to report their vote out. and does it look like we expected to look like or is there a surprise? you know? this is somehow not as democratic friendly, are they not as many same-day votes as we are expecting? those are the sorts of things to look for, because we just haven't seen enough of it right now to really characterize it. we can characterize it based on our expectations, based on history, but we want to see some reality, we want to see some tonight, and we are not

getting that from those big counties get. >> that's, right nothing count about the votes except the votes themselves. and that's what we're waiting. honestly kornacki, thank you! >> let's go now, as promised, herschel walker's campaign headquarters in georgia, where msnbc angel yard is standing by. vaughn, you're talking to us earlier about the sort of cautious, tentative, the optimism on walker side. has not been changing over the last let's couple of hours as this league has been flipping back and forth between the two candidates? >> right, and every single time that walker takes the lead here the crowd here chairs, but there is a reality at play in these rural counties that state, in new york, we're outlining right now. i am going back and forth with a walker outright who is on the ground here was part of this effort and there's some acknowledgment that needs to be made. number one, acknowledging these very rural counties, basically all bad for herschel. why? because warnock total share isn't dropping off as much as walkers is. and this is the line here, from the walker ally, quote: i think

the path is very narrow at this point. the numbers for walker are not coming in at the levels that the camp here that they need it to. they were looking to these rural counties to make up for the anticipated deficits in the greater metro atlanta. democrats have shown, not only the general election, but also two years ago in the runoff, that they turn out. now, the question is is what number to come in from the likes of dekalb and -- county. to be fair, early today, we were actually stopping a polling locations in dekalb and fulton county, each of us were counting on the fewer voters are becoming. in some polling locations, you know, 20, 5:30 voters every hour. i was talking to one poll worker who said, it was just a trickle of votes and folks that were coming in. so we can talk about it to last friday, the early votes had that very early voting location which was a two and a half hour waits. so the number of voters, we're talking about thousands, and some of these locations, that's only saw hundreds come out here today.

to what extent was that suppressed turnout here today? it is now clear here. if i can also comment, when we're talking about what the republicans expectations were here today. there was a question to what extent could brian kemp be the savior for this character that is herschel walker here? your member that back during the general election, the two campaign separately from one another, brian kemp has this odd american political figure right now. somebody who said certified the election in 2020, much to the ire of donald trump, but then in his primary back in may, he beat the trump backed challenger by more than 50 percentage points. and then fast forward here until last month, remember -- he beat stacey abrams by -- president. points that we tried to help herschel walker win over a 1000 libertarian voters. and also, it was more than 200,000 voters who voted for him for governor, but not for herschel walker the republican for u.s. senate. so as we are looking at these numbers here, frankly, the republicans are not optimistic

about what they are seeing here as they are telling me right now, at the same time, they are acknowledging that the hope is that fulton county and dekalb county numbers are expressing same day turnout. the question is what extent is that the case, that is what everybody here at walker headquarters is waiting on now. >> fascinating reporting, van, really helpful for us to understand the lay of the land here. vaughn hillyard, reporting live from herschel walker's campaign, to underscore what vaughn just said. he characterize the walker cam as not optimistic, what walker ally describing the path as a very narrow. essentially characterizing the overall feeling inside walkers operation right now as one -- they believe that they are missing their numbers. they are not coming in, the numbers are not coming in at the level that they know what they need. now that's one thing to have that impression, it's another thing to have the actual numbers. which is what steve has got. >> two more places where that is exactly, rachel, what just played out. we got the final votes into more significant counties here, and i think this is really

becoming a theme tonight. houston county, this is where warner robins is, the 11th largest city in georgia and again, you are talking about a republican friendly county with a fairly high concentration of college degrees, relative to the rest of the states. and you take a look here, walker wins it but his number is actually short of where he finished in november. meanwhile, jumps up by two points. this could be a great result for them and democrats, even though walker gets more votes out of here. this is actually exactly what democrats are hoping to get tonight. again, it's that pattern of these republican counties, these non-role republican counties. that is where -- you saw walker struggle in counties like, this relative to brian kemp in november. and you are not seeing him make jumps forward tonight. we said at the start tonight that's what he was going to need. we also another one of those counties sort of on the fringes of the atlanta metro area, excerpts, getting away from

here, but -- county is here. this is a big republican county. herschel walker finishes tonight two points ahead of where he finished in november. but remember, in november, the libertarian got 3% here. that other 1% goes warnock's way. this is a very small net gain for walker, and walker is hoping for a need -- needs much bigger gains than this, given the strength that walker is showing in the state right now. and where is that right? now walker is leading right now. he's leading a tally right now -- it continues to be those giant core of democratic votes that just -- count yet that we strong suspected right there in metro atlanta. >> steve, one of the basic things about these counts, that you are spending moments ago, is that, effectively, it's humans that vote, not acreage. and so the votes that are likely to come in that are going to be most helpful to raphael warnock are going to be from, what appears, geographically, to be concentrated area but is where most of the humans are in the state. in terms of the outstanding vote, now that we are at 85% of

the vote in, all over the state, can you just give us a general characterization of where the largest number of votes are still outstanding? are they, in fact, scattered from lots of rural counties? or they concentrated in some of the more populous areas? >> there is a scattering in the rural areas. but what you've got here is the two biggest places -- dekalb county, yves got a third of the vote still to come in dekalb county. and you can see, already, there's almost 175,000 votes that have been counted here. and there still a third to come. then there is fulton county, where you can see over 200,000 votes that have been counted. and that is probably just over half of the vote in fulton county. again, it's election day vote in both of those counties. there is still a substantial same day vote, about two thirds of the vote, in cobb counties what we've got counted right now. right now what we are seeing is that walker is actually leading in the election day vote in cobb county, so there's an opportunity with what remains in cobb county for walker to

cut into that lead. but again, warnock right now is doing five points better in cobb than he did in november. so, if you are walker you just don't want to cut into the league that warnock has right now, you want to bring warnock all the way down, under 56.8%. again, we say walker is leading in the same-day vote right now in cobb county. he's getting 54% of it the last time i checked. so, he needs to do better than that if he wants to bring the warnock number down to a place that he was hoping to see it. those are the biggest outstanding sources of votes. but there's also -- there are still also, at 20% in cherokee county, that's a lot of votes, forsyth county, now we have moved up in terms of -- we have got three quarters of the vote in in forsyth county. this is the second biggest republican vote producing county in the state. again, you have a large number of voters with college degrees here. and again, you had a gap in november between how walker did and how brian kemp did. i know you see what three quarters of the vote, in walker 's doing a little bit better. two tenths of a point better than he did in november -- but, again, remember, that

libertarian got 3% in november. and look at that -- warnock so far has we moved up nearly three points in forsyth county from his november total. so, what had actually been 8:32 and a half point margin for walker over warnock in november is actually, right now, reduced to actually 30 points right now. and again, kemp won this county by 46. >> i apologize. we need to interrupt you. we've had a change in the characterization of the race. at this hour, the race in georgia, this is a race that is still too close to call. but it is the view of the decision desk that is too close to call, but incumbent democratic senator raphael warnock leads in this race. so, the decision desk has decided to characterize this race as having a clear leader, and that being the democrat, raphael warnock, but still, the overall characterization is too close to call. back to you, steve. >> the reason why that just happened, rachel, what we were seeing was -- it was one thing to expect or to think that the democrats were going to fare very well

with the election day vote in this corollary. it's another thing to see it. we are now starting to see. it weit's another just in those lao minutes -- remember, we are sitting there at 55% in fulton county. now it's 67% of the vote in. now you are getting big numbers of election day vote. and you are seeing, again, this is how fulton looked in november. warnock won, it won a big, obviously, this is a huge democratic county. this is a place where there was some lag. brian kemp did substantially better than herschel walker did. and you are seeing that same day vote come in, real strength, continuing strength for raphael warnock. the name of the game tonight for herschel walker was to keep warnock's numbers in this atlanta metro area from getting any bigger than they were in november. he does not look on course to do that with anything we have seen so far in the atlanta metro area. the second thing that walker needed to do tonight, after that, was to improve significantly in the republican counties outside of the immediate atlanta metro area. we have shown you how he has not been doing that. and the third thing he need to

do tonight was to get really high rural turnout and to even do better in these rural areas than he had that known november. there are places -- there are plenty of places on this map where he has done that tonight. but those first two, i think, right now, you are really starting to get a picture -- and you see walking now taking the lead statewide. you are to seeing a picture of walker not succeeding in those first two missions. now when you are talking about this atlanta metro area and then you are expanding it to include those red counties outside of it, you are talking about a massive share of the state. >> a lot of elections are easy to parse. elections this close, worth 87% in and still too close to call, even with a lead now characterized by the decision desk, those require professionalism's. that is why we have got steve kornacki and that's why our colleague ari melber is standing by with our team of experience political insiders. >> hi, rachel, shout out to atlanta. let me bring in our atlanta, let me bring in our insiders, jen psaki and simone sanders

and michael steele, former chair of the rnc. -- we are picking up on that characterization, listening to joy, rachel, talk about atlanta. and the soul of atlanta, was it not outcast -- and goody mom. >> a shout out there, we need your expertise at the table. i'm >> glad to send it back as a shout-out to atlanta. because you have to get out and get out and do something. that is true in culture and in voting. that connects to what we are seeing, which is, according to, steve another performance by walker and an over performance from the last tryout by warnock. your thoughts? >> exactly. i have been texting with a bunch of democrats in georgia and what they have been telling me is that this is kind of the rollercoaster that they expected. and that we also saw back in 2021 with the runoff, which is that they backed a huge early vote. that's a big part of the democratic strategy. it was back then. it was this year. and also in the runoff, they knew that as numbers were coming in, as steve has been providing us numbers, the rural counties were where they really needed to watch. did walker get closer to camp

and a lot of these counties? did he make up any of that 200,000 gap of the people that voted for kemp who did not vote for warnock? and it doesn't seem like so far he has met that bar. but what they are awaiting for is metro atlanta. metro atlanta is where the votes are. all counties are not created equal. that's another way of saying, people in geography -- and that is certainly true here. some of these counties walker -- warnock could win 150 to 200,000 of a shear, which could put him over the edge. we will see. we are still waiting for more numbers. >> i think the growth and metro atlanta is something that is really worth unpacking. so, we always talk about black voters in georgia and the coalition that is needed and the strength and growth of black voters. but there's 1.1 million latino voters as well. they are the third largest racial group in georgia right now. 1.1 million. and they are concentrated in the atlanta metro area. i had an opportunity to speak to former ambassador andrew young, who is the first black

person elected in georgia since reconstruction in 1972, and on the surface, mayor of atlanta, and he noted that when he was mayor of a lie -- that we are talking about 1 million people -- atlanta has now gone to 7 million people in the metro area. that is huge. that makes a difference. this is a diverse electorate. this electorate this is sophisticated electorate. but to be very clear, raphael warnock could not get trounced in the rural counties and be the next senator, the reelected senator from georgia. so, i think that this coalition is a coalition that looks kind of like an obama coalition, to me. this is different than the biden coalition, right? reverend warnock is a black man from savannah, georgia. so, his coalition will definitely look slightly different. and i think what we are seeing is that he ran off some of his numbers in the rural counties and that is what you have got to do. he campaigned in those areas as well. he campaigned in the area where herschel walker is from and i think he is weeping those benefits and also the fact that herschel walker was a bad candidate that does not and did not represent black people.

>> that idea takes us to michael steele. your reaction to the numbers but also whether some of these republicans are turning out, not for walker, but despite walker. >> i think that's very true. i think when you are looking at these numbers, and symone really put her finger on it -- i think an overlooked point, tonight, when you step back and look at it, what senator warnock has been able to do is, he has not only helped serve, he has improved the game for himself in these rural parts of georgia. so, while has herschel walker picked out -- maybe he has gone up a point or two from november -- warnock, a half a point or three quarters of a point. >> yeah. >> -- that says a lot about the dynamics of the voters on the ground. meaning that those republicans in those blood red districts or counties looked at herschel walker and they liked warnock

better by a half a percent or three quarters of a percent. statewide, it makes a huge difference when the margins are this close. so, it was not just enough for herschel walker to do well and keep being warnock's down in metro atlanta. he had to really outperform in his base vote. and he has not. >> all right, i want to give it back to rachel. we have three insiders, a lot of good perspective here. our thanks to jen, symone and michael steele. rachel, back to you. >> thank you. we are going to take a quick break right now. it is clues close to call. nbc's decision day desk considers this race to be too close to call. with senator warnock in the late, we've got 87% of the vote on, we've got no call in terms of who is going to win this race. lots to come. stay with us. stay with us

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>> all professional visage is falling -- >> i don't know if we can get it back. >> there is a lot to say -- some of which can be said on television. >> [laughter] >> we work in television. we are going to try to get it together. people? okay, it's 10:00 on the east coast. the polls among close in the great state of georgia for three hours. the georgia u.s. senate race is too close to call. nbc's decision desk characterizes this race as one in which democratic incumbent senator raphael warnock is in the league. but you can see how tight it is. -- percent of the vote statewide. that number has picked up significantly since we went to that quick commercial break. steve, what came in what we were away? we >> just got a bunch of same day votes from gwinnett county. this is, again, one of the biggest -- almost 1 million people here, almost one of the fastest-growing counties in the state. it's become a core democratic

county. and what's significant about what we just got out of gwinnett county is that warnock lead that batch of election day votes that just came in by a fairly significant margin over walker. so, with 90% in, you see that raphael warnock finish in this county -- he's running at 62.4. again, for walking tonight, in a place like gwinnett county, it was, make sure warnock does not get any higher than he did in november and try to rule his number back a little bit. instead, you can see walker's down a point here right now. warnock is up three and a half points relatively november. and again, i think significantly, in that last batch of election day votes just came in in gwinnett county. they favored warnock over walker. so, warnock is still winning the vote overall. he didn't get 62% by this but a significant margin. we also got more election day vote from cobb county. again, now up to 85% of the vote in -- now walker has been leading in the election vote in cobb

county by about an eight-point margin. so, as a result, if you've been following, the last time we looked at cobb, we're not was sitting at about 62%. his numbers now fall under 60. but he finished at 56.8 back in november. so, again, with 85% of the vote in, warnock is running now three points better in cobb than he did in november. walker's still trying to get to his november number. again, he is leading that election day vote, so i would expect, with the remaining voter, walker to tip up a bit and walker to come down to ted. but warnock, i think, on pace to get in cobb county exactly what he was looking to get out of it tonight. take a look at douglas county. we have all the voting in douglas county. again, atlanta metro area -- how did it look in november? warnock 64 point. day how does it look tonight? warnock, basically, two points better than he did november. how about walker? he improved by one tenth of a point. this is exactly what democrats want to see in this atlanta metro area. e doing very well with that same day vote in gwinnett -- they are on pace in cobb. they exceeded their number in

douglas. we showed you rockdale earlier. again, all of the things, all those counties i just mentioned, walker had a goal tonight. he has not met that goal in any of those counties. a couple others we can show -- you look, south of atlanta, fayette county, how about this one -- walker, all the vote is in. walker wins this tonight by 491 votes. >> wow. >> this county, in the 2004 -- we talk about the atlanta metro area. it's outside of clayton and fulton and dekalb, we have been democratic counties for a long time, the rest of these counties that are blue right now, they used to be red counties. this county stays red tonight by forged 91 voice votes. it voted for george w. bush in 2004 by 43 points. so, that's the kind of transformation you have seen in this atlanta metro area. and, i think, critically, for democrats tonight, this is an improvement, again, from november. warnock bumps up by 2.3 points. warnock walker by only two tenths of a. point so, the democrats improve

and they nearly pick off a at county tonight. they nearly take another one of these -- they have been picking warnock, one or two, of every election it seems, the last couple of decades. they almost had fayette tonight. they come with forged 91 votes. but again, it's not at all what walker wanted to see if that county tonight. all the voters in in paulding county. we showed you this one. earlier -- warnock moves up by more than that. again, it was more improvement here for warnock and for walker. this is a core republican county. we talked about walker needing to move up four or five points in places like this. all of the vote is in right now -- i should say, all the voters in in walton county. take a look at this one. it's another core republican county. warnock walkers up a little. warnock is -- it's a wash. we are still waiting on some votes here. but the stories is consistently the same. the biggest republican counties in the -- state the biggest republican vote producing counties in the state -- are the places generally where walker lagged behind brian kemp,

the republican governor, that -- in november. and he just has not moved a number of the way that he needed to in basically any of those counties. he is still not getting anywhere near the level that camp got, he needs to get to the kemp level. again, the democrats in those counties, they have actually gotten stronger so far tonight. and the last batch of same-day vote, we just saw in gwinnett county, it was good news for democrats too because warnock is on pace to continue adding votes. you see, since we came on, the lead comes down statewide for warnock. that's because of that cobb election day vote that i was telling you back about, that favors, walker got added in. so, it makes it closer -- still waiting on a lot of same day vote out of dekalb, the waiting here on a ton of from fulton -- we just got basically the rest of the vote from cherokee county, the one we have been talking up all night, as a critical barometer. athe number one republican vote producing county in the state

of georgia. herschel walker is going to finish at 69.1% there, it looks like. again, that is an improvement for him from the november general election, from the 67.6 he got in november to the 69.1 tonight, he moved up 1.5 points in cherokee county. but walker moved up from 29.2 to 30.9. warnock, excuse me, moved up from 29.2 to 30.9. he improved by 1.7 points. so, this actually -- walker got a bigger number that he got to november. but his margin is actually less tonight than it was in november. and again, this is a county -- look at how bryan kemp did in the governor's race. he won by 50 points. tonight, is walker going to come out of here with not even a 40-point victory at the state. so, a 30 -- it was almost 54 brian kemp so not at all what herschel walker needed out of this county tonight. again, that probably leaves --

that leaves forsyth county as the second biggest republican county, where we have significant outstanding vote. i will show you. but the story is no different. again, warnock has moved out more since november than walker. these are just all places where walker needed to have significant gains. and i say significant -- i say, four or five points better than he did november and we are just now seeing him do it anywhere. and we are seeing democrats get the numbers they wanted two out of the atlanta metro area. and i think what we are just sort of waiting on right now is to see is, some of that more of that same day vote. i think we've not seen particularly the same day badges coming in from dekalb -- i think everyone expects the same day election vote in dekalb to break four warnock in a way that i think would make this matte look even more promising for him. but we have not seen a report from dekalb yet, so i think there may be some waiting on that. and again, there is maybe a little bit more from fulton. but the numbers we just saw from gwinnett county -- those are numbers that democrats want to be seeing. >> 65 and 70% in from dekalb

and fulton is promising, at this, point for democrats, for sure. steve, thank, you interrupt us as more stuff comes in that is going to change our understanding of these dynamics. let's go back to greg bluestein, politics reporter at the atlanta journal-constitution. he has been live for us tonight at the warnock campaign quarters. greg, it's been a seesaw here, as we have seen, this league slip flip back and forth. we did just get about 15 or 20 minutes of consistent reports from steve kornacki, basically describing all of the results, just sort of pointing in a warnock friendly direction. so it certainly feels right now that we're not characterizing warnock being in the lead, and those latest results, feel positive for warnock. how does it feel there at hq? nock>> look, it's a full-on pary mode right now at hq. there is a dance scene behind me. steve has been spot on all night, not surprisingly, about the seesaw. it looks like democrats would have an early, david it looks like republicans would cut into their margins, it looked like

democrats would retain that lead right now. they're still tens of thousands of votes in metro atlanta to be counted. that's why i'm getting tech from republicans now saying, stick a fork in, it listing is over. >> republicans are telling you that? >> senior republicans are saying, it's all over -- but the counting, it's over. i'm hearing reports from strategists allied with herschel walker's campaign saying, there's very little path to victory right now for us. still have to wait until those metro atlanta counties commit -- but it is not looking good for herschel walker right now at all. >> greg, we don't want to get ahead of the actual results. as i mentioned, we will reiterate -- nbc characterizes this race right now is too close to call, with senator reverend raphael warnock in the league. that's as far as we can go in terms of projecting any sort of result here. given that, though, and given what you are just describing, i want to just ask you substantively, one of the things that we saw particularly after the general election for this runoff in particular was

senator warnock's campaign appealing openly to republicans and appealing openly to swing voters and people who do not ally themselves, traditionally, with the democratic party and democratic candidates. is it possible for us to tell, from your reporting, from what you are seeing in the results, from what the campaigns are seeing, whether or not that part of the strategy, from warnock, might have been the difference maker? warnock,>> yeah. it's a unique strategy. because usually, runoffs -- turnout operation. -- go for the pace. but, in this case, senator warnock had the resources and the message to go after not just a liberal base but also this fifth tickets wing voters, moderates and independents who, in big numbers, did not back herschel walker. we talked about this, governor kemp had 200,000 more votes then herschel walker in the mid term. and this is an area where democrats thought they could continue to appeal to those voters and get them back to the polls, even without other races on the ballot. >> right. so, even in counties where they are not going to end up winning -- the democratic candidate is not

going to end up winning -- it shaving gathers, marching keeping the eye on those margins, low in places where the republican won, we are seeing the effect of that tonight in these polls. >> greg bluestein, politics reporter at the atlanta journal-constitution, msnbc political contributor. we will be back with you. i appreciate it. >> striking that vaughn hillyard sources aligned with -- and are so forthright and that speaks to the lack of support that herschel walker had -- >> what do you mean. ? >> you are left to the when you are all in. but when the guy is trump's handpicked guy -- doesn't even live in the state. the republican operatives who can read a poll and know what every last republican vote in the state's and they know they are back in -- the county outstanding, they will tell reporters, like vaughn hillyard and greg bluestein the truth. i think you could take the reporting, not just because of the caliber of journalists that they are, but because of the quality of the sources that are going to talk about -- >> democrats, i think, have been consistent all night. the texts vibe has been this

way all night. democrats have been confident all night. because the thing, is what democrats and what you understand -- i think, worked on in campaigns -- is that democrats vote early and they report late. and so if you are getting toward the end of the night and what is left are places like dekalb county in fulton county, democrats feel really good if it looks like a tie because, they say, those late voters are us. democrats say, the way that voter suppression has worked is that it's push democrats to really early vote, to really lean into souls to the polls and early, and lean into absentee, which was really destroyed by this absentee, law -- was crushed by. it but also show up on election day. i talked to a lot of voters in atlanta who said -- they were deliberately waiting for an election night. that was the goal, to vote on election day. so, democrats get all three bites at the apple. republicans only get the one. >> that's what happens when you tell people to just vote and don't say that early voting is -- >> -- >> democrats get all three. >> the other thing that vaughn

hillyard was talking about, that i think there's discussing is that walker strategy at the beginning of this race was not too -- sorry, warnock strategy was not to go after walker and his myriad scandals. it was to talk about the work that he had done, focusing on state level issues, and also to invoke his bipartisan records, specifically mentioning ted cruz and marco rubio on the campaign trail. with ted cruz, warnock worked on a bipartisan infrastructure effort in terms of highways, with mark aruba he worked on maternal health policy. these were people whose names -- prominent republicans -- whose names he was invoking in a bag to do exactly what he ended up doing, which is eat in to walk or share of moderate georgia voters who find him unpalatable. -- >> but he closed this campaign with -- >> yes, very different. >> -- a very direct attack challenge to herschel walker and everything walker is represented as a candidate. there is room for one more note about the colossal stupidity of

the trump just vote on election day strategy. and that is that he is choosing it in a state that one of its earlier choices for voter suppression was to close the polls at 7 pm, to leave them open only for 12 hours, 7 to 7, the state we are sitting here in right now, it's 15 hours. new york state opens at 6 am and closes at 9 pm. so, if you are donald trump and you say, i only want you to vote on election day, the next thing you say to your republican legislatures is, okay, by the way, put three more hours on election day. >> or make it -- >> give me three more hours at least on election day. but he has just played into this thing so flawlessly stupidly all the way, only on election day. >> here's my totally down question about this point, which i think you have all made admirably tonight. so, the reason that trump has demonized absentee voting and early voting is because he needs to do so in order to feed

the backward looking myth of why he lost in 2020. now the 2020 election will never be fought again. nothing will ever happen there that will ever vindicate that strategy. we are not going to terminate the constitution and reinstate him without it. it is not going to happen. and so is there anything that the republican party can take that and turn it into something that might be electorally constructive for them? i mean, it has no value, even in trump's world, except in this backward looking myth making thing that only works if he gets to be a dictator because we would get rid of the constitution. it really does not function in any way. how can they take this and make it function for them in the future? >> -- ronna mcdaniel -- ronna -- she's out there tweeting her heart out, bless her soul. go, go, go -- they are trying. but it's too late. but the reason that they had the malign -- republicans built absentee voting. >> that's right. >> that was their strategy.

the democrats do it now much better than i ever did. but part of that is because trump tainted it so completely. >> right. >> you are right, he will never stop painting it. even if everyone goes to him and say, we can't win without -- >> all that matters is that i'm not -- loser from 2020. >> correct, correct. yes, and he has two -- he will spend the rest of his life trying to disqualify the absentee ballots from 2020. because, in his illusions delusional imagination, that's -- >> by the way, romney mcdaniel, whose uncle got 53% of the vote in georgia, this is a state that has not overwhelmingly elected republicans. barack obama got 47% in 2008. then, he got 45% against mitt romney, who was a sort of norm core type republican. and then he got started to get real tight. and by the time it got to joe biden, it was 49.5 to 49.2. the state has been slipping

slowly, slowly away. and so, the dumbest thing you can do is to foreclose any opportunity for people who still remain republicans to vote. but they made a conscious choice, not just here, but all over the country -- >> poisoned the well -- >> they poisoned -- correct, their best type of voting. >> that's dead, it's still a tie. too close to call -- nbc characterizes this race as raphael warnock being in the league. i was about to go to a break. but i am going to steve. i don't know why. steve, they have told me to go to you. >> i just wanted to give -- you we have a big update of 45,000 votes that came out of fulton county. >> oh! >> we also the rest of clayton county, at least in terms of the percentages, it's the best democratic county in the state. so, you see warnock finishing with 89% in clayton county. and then it's a big update a 45,000 votes in fulton county. now really getting into those same day -- those election day votes. and as you can see, their democratic ballots, but they are not as democratic as the

early vote. so, you are looking at, again, warnock's number comes down a little bit -- but he is still sitting at 79%, essentially. he had finished at 73 and a half on election day. so, you look at what is left here. you would expect this number to come down some. but not to the level that walker needs it to come down to. walker needs to come down to 73 and a half or less. and now we have 83% in here. we have the vast majority of the vote in fulton county. and election day voters exactly what democrats are hoping that it looks like. so, you can see -- just before that came in, just before that and clayton had come in, walker had been leading in the statewide tally. he had been leaving because the other major republican votes producing county, forsyth county, you have that cherokee and forsyth right next to each other -- they are number one and number two in terms of producing republican votes. we basically got all of the vote in in cherokee county. and we have got almost all the vote now in in forsyth county. and you can see, here again, walker winning it. but it's warnock who actually improved more than walker did

from november. so, this is, on paper, walker wins the county -- but this is a loss for him. because we need to do much better than this in forsyth county. so, this was the last biggest place left. i think a week that county, there is one other, >> somewhat significant republican county that has votes left. but otherwise it just a county, the same day vote in dekalb county, and that now we have a big piece of the puzzle just fold in there and we've got clayton county all the way in. and what that adds up to is now a lead of walker for 14,000 votes, more than that statewide, and you really -- if you are looking at this from a republican standpoint, where the vote second overcome just that 14,000? that gets tough to see, let alone with what is still to come in the cab, and fulton county. >> can we go back to clayton county, for a second, steve? can you put clayton county up there and then shows that vote total versus what we saw on the previous election? >> yeah. this is an improvement here for warnock and a slight drop for

walker. this is -- >> okay. >> this is the county, as a matter of fact, it was four in the morning on the friday after the election in 2020, that this county came in with an update that actually put joe biden ahead in georgia for the first time. and -- after that. >> so, just to summarize, and i may get this wrong, i'm just taking notes while you are talking -- >> oh! >> sorry. >> we just got a big update. this is a big update from dekalb county. now, we are up to three quarters of the vote in the cab. and wow, okay, now we have got just about all the vote in from -- okay, this is -- >> okay, that's it. >> gwinnett county, nearly 1 million people live here. warnock has improved by more than three points from november. what does this look like statewide? well, i will let you take it from there. i think there is some news there. >> that check mark is a consequential thing. nbc news can now project that the winner of the georgia u.s.

senate election is incumbent democrat raphael warnock. you saw the math happen, effectively, live on your screen there. we see a difference here of just 26,000 votes between these two gentlemen. but 94% of the vote in -- we have previously characterized senator warnock as being in the league. nbc news, again, now projects that the winner of this u.s. senate race is the incumbent democrat raphael warnock. now we saw, as these results came in, around the state, we saw mr. walker do marginally better, particularly in small, rural, lightly populated, heavily republican counties. that was not enough to make up for the improvement in state that we saw from senator warnock in heavily democratic areas. in larger, more populated republican leading-leaning counties, senator warnock, we saw him cut into the kind of lead that mr. walker might otherwise have had. but the final result is now

known. the u.s. senate seat in georgia will be held by raphael warnock. voters in georgia, for the fourth time in two years choose raphael warnock as their senator for this seat. when republican senator johnny isakson retired, senator raphael warnock -- now senator warnock -- runoff, got the. see -- two years, and he decided to run for reelection. -- tonight is the runoff, and he is reelected to the united states senate -- i believe, correct me if this is i am wrong. but this is the first african american man elected to a full term in the great state of georgia. wow. that happened. >> we should know that it shouldn't have had to happen. the fact that he has had to run -- what, five times, in -- >> -- >> 1 million times in two years. it's a result of jim crow. it was a decision made in 1964.

the guy's name was denmark -- a united states -- senator from -- needed to have these runoff elections in order to prevent -- and they decided saw their block voting as inherently voter fraud. and therefore, they needed to give a second shot and so the reality is that raphael warnock already won the seat in the fact that he had to win it twice is a result of georgia still retaining some aspects of jim crow, which they doubled down on this with this -- a shortened period in order to do this in sort of nine weeks. only had four weeks -- they cut off the last weekend. voting ended on friday of last week. they -- second weekend, they killed souls to the polls right before the election. republicans in the state of georgia have done everything. and brian kemp, he may look good with what he did with trump and resisting him, but brian kemp is one of the --

because republicans want to guarantee themselves the statewide elections. in this case, they were defined by a very multi racial coalition of voters. >> and signed that law behind closed doors, in front of a picture of a plantation. if you needed any more visual. this is a resounding victory for people of color, for black georgians, for changing country, for one of the most -- i spent some time with reverend warnock on the trail, the last time he ran. it's a phenomenally disciplined candidate. the day that the raffensperger phone call leaked -- and that's a time you could really just go after donald trump. raphael warnock did not choose to do that. he chose to talk about health care. he chose to talk about education. he is someone that is relentlessly focused on issues ranging from student loan debt to climate change, maternal mortality, really important issues in his tenure in the senate, which of course, has only been two years long. >> we have a live shot here of

raphael warnock's headquarters in georgia where, as they say, crowd goes wild. it's people reacting to the news that their candid has been reelected to the u.s. senate. you just feel the energy through the screen. >> phones. >> right now everybody holding the phone to capture the moment. >> -- you probably don't need yours out. you are watching the events -- watching your screen. but that's cool. that's cool. for the democrats, this has a practical impact. having 51 senators is better than having 50 senators, particularly when some of your senators are named sinema and manchin and he says a lot about what you are going to get done in 2024. because it says a lot about what joe biden in the democratic party are going to be able to do in terms of democratic policy. joe biden's going to sign some bills, signed some law, they are going to be able to do stuff with legislation that they otherwise would not have

been able to do -- as we saw. >> you have got now -- this is another -- those counties that are seismic -- -- committee. equal number of -- one on the -- -- -- >> mcconnells of --

-- what he did -- that is now in a couple of years. >> fail here in just a -- >> jason johnston. -- headquarters. a second -- -- i can hear. -- it's amazing. -- warnock's team -- tell you guys -- elation -- the like they say -- insiders -- raphael warnock -- determine the -- solidly -- and he has to run again -- has to run again --

-- it's a victory for them -- >> wow. >> -- the moment people -- >> as you said, rachel, all throughout the, night i was surprised at how optimistic the democrats were. everyone in this room feels like accomplish something. and i got to tell, you by comparison, what i was going through at the community today, even when i talk to republicans, many of them said, they did not want to vote for herschel walker. but every democrat said they were thrilled to vote for raphael warnock a second, third, or fourth time, if necessary, to get him back in the senate. >> jason johnson, thank you so much. it's great to have you there, great to have you having those conversations. i know you can't hear me. so, i will just say bye. >> [laughter] we're >> going to

try to get back to greg bluestein, in a different part of the room as well -- also, we should check in with vaughn hillyard at the walker campaign headquarters. if they can, they obviously are receiving the same information, presumably with a much different mood. vaughn hillyard at herschel walker in georgia. vaughn hillyard? >> we should note, on the television screen here at walker headquarters, they are playing fox news. and they were a little delayed after us. but just in the last few minutes, fox news has officially called it for raphael warnock. the room here was quiet. and they are now playing journeys don't stop believing, so, make of that what you will. i always also just talking with that walker ally who i have been talking with and the quote was, i believe, it's over. there was an acknowledgment that this was a campaign that was unable to make up that 38,000 vote deficit that, one month ago, they faced against raphael warnock here. they brought out the likes of brian kemp to try to help

convince those libertarian voters to try to convince those folks to that either did not vote in the election at all or voted for the democrat, raphael warnock, who changed their votes. but what these results are showing us is that it was not enough. and if i may, after traveling around the country here through the course of 2022 to cover midterms from the likes of arizona here, to georgia, you have seen yet again these trump backed candidates go down. the they won primaries here across the country from the likes of kari lake in arizona, to tour tudor dixon -- it was a question of, would, for the second time, so many of these are independent voters -- in these key states, in -- the willing to vote for a democrat yet again and the american voter has clearly answer that tonight. it's that, yes, they're willing

to vote, not just one time for a democrat but they're willing to vote for a democrat for second or even a third time. and that is what was ultimately going to be handing raphael warnock yet a six-year term here in the united states senate. >> vaughn hillyard, joining that connective tissue you are describing between these different types of campaigns, these different types of candidates and different parts of the country, one of the things i therefore have to ask because it is part of a pattern, is whether there is any question as to whether or not mr. walker will concede? he was asked explicitly on the campaign trail this week if he lost the race, whether he would concede the race and he walked away from the people who are asking him that question without answering it. do you have any expectation, or do we have any reporting to indicate how he might himself, personally, analysts loss? >> their direct answer to that is no. but there is a question ill campaign apparatus here around herschel walker. we should note that there has been no even denial of a -- that came out here in the last five days of a woman who came

forward with her name and on the record, alleging that herschel walker physically attacked her. there was no denial of response ever given by the campaign. and if you just look at the amount of money that went toward herschel walker's candidacy, he was outspent by more than a 2 to 1 margin by warnock forces here. this is a question about mitch mcconnell, about rick scott, about the fate that was placed in this candidate, who was initially endorsed by donald trump -- i think you have a republican party that is implicitly looking to move on from donald trump. but whether they will ever explicitly get to that point, that is the question. but in terms of herschel walker, coming out and defending him, you saw very few republican senators come out. the likes of tim scott, jon kennedy, lindsey graham -- there was not a cavalry, though, of republican figures that came out to the state. not even donald trump was willing to come back out here and put his name on herschel walker. so, the former heisman trophy winner may be a lone man walking.

this is a man who did not take up residency here in georgia until, literally, just about 14 months ago here. and so you are unlikely to see the likes of georgian republican figures -- brian kemp was not even willing to campaign with him. and so after he handily won his november general election -- so, you should expect to see herschel walker, who was not involved in politics before this year, really -- as republicans look to try to posture towards not only 2024 senate races, house races, but also try to come to terms with how they could even begin to win the white house as donald trump is the only announced candidate on the republican field right now. >> vaughn hillyard, one last question for you, along those lines, mr. walker has lost tonight. but he got close. at least that's with the numbers we are looking at right now, with not every vote counted, but very close. he's within a point of raphael warnock. with a big investment in his campaign, with more strategic and financial support from mitch mcconnell, from rick

scott, from the other sort of republican powers that be, and these guys that control -- in the party, arguably he could have got their. are there people close to the walker campaign who are mad about that, who are angry that they did not get the kind of support that might, conceivably, have put them in the winners column tonight? have put them in the winners colu>> i asked brian kemp this question when i sat down and interviewed with him last week on thursday. i said, does it frustrate you? and he said that he does not believe that money matters in races like this. and in large part, the american public here is keenly aware of these candidates here. and i think that that general election from a month ago was a testament to that. the state of georgia, which is historically a conservative state, brian kemp which back on the i.t. d that this is a purple state, despite the last two election cycles. he bcc abrams by eight percentage points. and that is calling into question where the voting

electorate, to how far they are willing to go here. and herschel walker tried to step away from donald trump in the last five weeks. but clearly, there was a stand that came with the last year of his candidacy. in terms of the actual amount of money spent on these candidates and on these campaigns, i think you go to the likes of even arizona, where he spent the last several months here. and you compare it to the likes of mark kelly in the u.s. senate race and raphael warnock. they were to build around -- and i think the biden administration allowed them to do this -- this idea of capitol hill successes. the likes of mark kelly was able to hold at the up the chips act, a deal he was instrumental in. joe biden was in arizona today to join him. raphael warnock has talked about the millions of dollars that he was able to direct towards hbcu and he was able to make the case here to, especially, democratic voters are in the state of georgia

that he helped press the biden administration on student loan forgiveness. he was able to make the case here over the course of the last two years, that having a senate majority and having that extra democrat up on capitol hill was consequential. it was more than just simply representation for the state of georgia. but it had real world consequences. and that is why republicans are also working up against. it's how the democrats can hold up the chips act. they can hold up the infrastructure package. they can hold up the significant achievements upon capitol hill to voters and make the case that democrats are able to do something i like the republican party which is still trying to figure out what its future looks like with donald trump, potentially, looking to see the helm of it again. >> msnbc's vaughn hillyard reporting live for us from herschel walker's campaign headquarters where the crowd there has now also just heard the news about mr. walker falling short. tonight vaughn hillyard, thank you for your insight tonight. it's good to have you with us.

it's much appreciated. >> can i pick on something that he just said? >> yeah, please. >> one thing we should all this of ourselves of ever asking is, will the republicans get in a room to mourn decide that the herschel walker strategies a bad idea? the dog mastriano strategy socks, kari lake was a freak -- no! this is who they are. they will not do that. and von said about 1000 million important things. the other is that republicans now have totally different forces of gravity and the supreme court now pulls them down. it does not lift them up. they got all six seats and voters at the court. the idea of governing -- republicans have always mocked democrats. i will go out there with my plan. it now proves that voters are pretty into governing. so, all of the gravitational things that republicans have counted on, the supreme court will help me, governing is boring, we can just go for the cultural issues -- it is close, which means they will not change their strategies. but the political forces are pulling against everything that they have made a 20-year bet on. >> the thing is, republicans

made a affirmative choice. because the demographics to start with a. are about six and ten white americans of republicans. that is just a base. in the south, racially polarized voting, it is much more lopsided than that. and the republican starts off at about 50% -- 49 or 50% in any southern state. that is just reality. and some republicans have made a choice over the last generation that they are not going to do policy, that policy is boring, policy is wonky, it's nerdy. and what they are going to do is focus on non-college educated white voters, demonize college education in collegiate education as being athlete and a feat effete and awful and just the -- nights of voters and focus on their emotions. everything that the republicans of put forward is about -- and their fears. and making the more afraid of demographic change, more afraid of education, more frayed of people who live in cities. more afraid of the border and of immigrants and just constantly stoking that. there is a short term benefit to that, which you just saw

tonight. >> right. >> which you can get enough rural voters enough non-college educated white voters to come out and beautifully vote for whomever you put forward, no matter how flawed, no matter how many times they put a gun to the head of the woman they were married to. they don't care about that. they will come out dutifully. but the problem is, at some point, we have a -- that's more religiously diverse and more diverse in terms of religion. you are going to have to do what michael steele tried to do when he was chair of the rnc. you've got to, at some, point try to appeal to non white voters. you just have to. because the demographics are what they are. i -- might cousin in atlanta because he moved to georgia. from queens -- and a lot of people -- people are moving around and moving south. and so the states like north carolina and georgia are just going to change more. so, at some point, republicans -- yet, it works for y'all, for now. you are going to have to make a decision. and i am sorry. but the black candidates you put up -- the muslim candidates, they can't be dr. oz. at a certain point, people are

not going to go for that. you cannot humiliate people that you want to bring in. and i'm sorry, but herschel walker was a humiliation to black people. the people that i talked to an atlanta and all over the country who have been all in my phone saying, please promised me that this man will be a senator. because they felt absolutely kicked in the face and humiliated and had their noses rubbed in the dirt by the fact of his nomination. >> yeah -- >> because he was so inadequate, so bad, what did chappelle say, stupid, that it made it look like you are mocking black people. that's not a strategy. >> the atlantic today suggested that herschel walker's candidacy was an assault on black dignity. >> it was. >> and the reporting that we have out of atlanta -- the cnn polling from last week said that he was going to win 3% of the black vote. i mean, just a staggering rejection from the black community. and you know, i will say, joy,

you would think that the republican party would have to -- but it increasingly feels like her strategy is, if we cannot win, then let's change the rules. >> just suppress them. >> whether it is gerrymandering, whether it is the independent state legislator theory, whether it is voter suppression, change the game. >> yeah. the georgia voter has shown over the last few elections who they will vote for. they will vote for democrats, and they will vote for republicans who do not align themselves with trump. republicans who say no to trump. that is where they will vote for statewide. they will not vote for trump republican statewide and they will not vote -- i mean, this is a message about where the republican party is. it does not mean that georgia, right now, is an all blue state. there are plenty of republicans in georgia, including those, lots of people who cast votes for herschel walker tonight. but that idea that the republican party has made a strategic error in aligning itself with somebody who

republican voters in georgia will not go with, that is a lesson that sort of doesn't -- whether or not they learned, the voters are going to keep teaching that lesson whether or not republicans ever learned. >> well, steve at the board tonight, every time he said this county voted overwhelmingly for george w. bush, you, know it is now voting democratic. i was just looking at it thinking okay, well, when senator warnock runs against six years from now, how many of those counties will steve be pointing to saying this was read the last time senator warnock won. normally, when you win a senate seat by one point people think of you as vulnerable next time. not here. but the likelihood is, next time, rafael warnock, you probably will call it for him a little earlier. at 9:30 instead of 10:30. and he will win with 50 2:53, something like that a stable reelection number for an incumbent who has done the job. that is very likely. four years from now in georgia,

because of that movement that story was identifying. >> unless what alex just said happens, unless they deal with the demographic changes and the sorts of rigid appeals that day two parties have aligned themselves into, the republicans decide to deal with that by restricting voting to the extended electoral preferences among the voters do not matter. because you could gerrymander a legislator, you cannot gerrymander a senate seat. you can restrict voting in such a way that makes it so that the voters preferences counts. so to have the former president saying let's terminate the constitution and just install the next leader, that is shocking, he always speaks in terms of that blunt, to talk iselin dislocate the news cycle. but it is of a piece, with this idea that election results should be seen as suspect, that the republican candidates, if you had to guess in the abstract, you could guess that a lot of them would not concede when they lose. the idea of problem anti-saying

election themselves, problem time saying democracy itself is not just a trump problem, it is increasingly a problem on the right. >> yes. it is a brian kemp problem. he believes that you should restrict drop boxes, you shouldn't be able to serve people water at the polls, brian kemp and donald trump are only different by degrees. brian kemp, is he some sort of champion of democracy? no. he is a champion vote suppressor. he did it when he was secretary of state, you know, engineered that state for himself to become governor, and then they -- to make it as hard as possible for anyone who put democrats to vote. college students had a hell of a time. they have their votes challenged in this election. they made a start as possible and they still lost. they won't learn a lesson from it because brian kemp agrees with donald trump on the fundamental thing. those people should not be allowed to vote because they do not vote for me. >> and georgia has a history of doing this. the reason we haven't, austere, pointed is a conviction of the civil rights era trying to

thwart black candidacies. the reason you have 167 counties in georgia is to give more power to rural voters. this is what the state does. so, the idea that they would react to this loss, republicans in charge, by trying to change the rules of the game, that i mean, they have done it before. >> i think the other thing that democrats would have to decide is the strategy because they still do that, they sit around and do strategic things, whether voting rights is the next find, and whether having the find abandon the filibuster and actually do something. 486 states, 48 states have contemplated 486 voter suppression laws. and a lot of them have passed. >> but they're never going to get anything through a republican-controlled house. even if it is essentially an even house, there -- that is just not going to go anywhere. i mean, the question is whether or not they will be able to do it at the state level, essentially, and whether or not federal judicial nominees will. >> the john lewis voting rights act, how long is that thing

alive? once they have, it is a question, when they get a new congress. >> it expires on new year's eve. everything that this congress passes digestion as the congress adjourns. >> it is unfortunate. >> while we were having this conversation about georgia, you know who we have to bring in? somebody in georgia who is a politics reporter at the atlanta georgia constitution. he is a truffle warnock headquarters where it looks like if anything, things are lively or than they were ten minutes ago and we were back there with jason. greg, how are things in the, room and let me just get your reaction to the results tonight. >> senator warnock and his strategist feel like this is a vindication of his strategy. which was not just to energize the liberal base, but just to claim -- he talked about bipartisanship, he talked about working across party lines, he didn't go for, you, know sort of the red meat that would have energized more democratic voters because he felt like he already had locked up the base.

at the same time, herschel walker ran a trump-centric strategy. he talked about culture wars, gender, pronouns, transgender sports, issues that weren't on the top of the line for so many voters. he allowed senator warnock to not just get the democratic vote, but also there are middle of the road voters. >> greg, if you are not on tv right now, my office would be calling you to find out whether or not senator warnock is expected to be giving a victory speech anytime soon. pretend we are not on tv and let me know if you know the answer to that question. >> i think he is. i think we are going to hear in a couple of minutes that he might be taking the stage fairly soon. i also think that we might hear news out of herschel walker's campaign. i know that i was asked to deliver a phone number between intermediaries. we might hear something from herschel walker's camp soon as well. >> you are asked to deliver a phone number for one of the candidates to the other candidate? >> exactly.

>> is it your belief that mr. walker will concede that he has lost this race? he will not answer questions about that as recently as this week. >> yeah, i have asked his aides and strategist about that. they think he will, this was earlier tonight. they thought he would kind of go gracefully. but as you said earlier, you know, he said it in public forums that he acknowledged the outcome of the results. but we are just not sure of the timetable. but i do know that i was asked to give a phone number of a key warnock strategist to herschel walker's camp. >> greg, very important information, thank you for that. we will be back with you and we will be taking senator warnock's victory speech and we will be hearing from senator walker presumably, or mr. walker as well if he doesn't fact make a concession speech that is public facing at all this evening. i want to turn it over to my colleague chris hayes who is with our team of political insiders, chris. >> thank you very much.

i am here with former white house press secretary jen psaki, host of simone on msnbc, and former chair michael steele. as campaign veteran some professionals, you have got to be feeling quite good inside that warnock right now. what is your big take away from this victory tonight? >> we have spent so much time talking about herschel walker, the vampire versus werewolf campaign, we had a very good campaign. he campaigned across the state, he had a positive and affirmative message, i would not be surprised, and i have already heard rumblings of this from democrats, if people start talking about warnock as kind of the next, the next type of person who should run for higher office, it is not what he's thinking about tonight i don't think, but this is the kind of victory where it really will introduce you to a broader pool of the public. >> i mean, what is so striking to me about warnock, he has no one, this is a guy who has never run for office before. in fact, when that recruiting class happened in 2018, chuck

schumer tried to get stacey abrams to run for that senate seat, and she was like i want to run for governor. warnock was seen as like, oh, okay, this is what we will do. he didn't make a lot of headlines around that race. this man has now won four races in two years in an r plus three terrain, basically, and and i hear that there was a tough year for georgia for democrats. he has got some very serious high-level political talent. >> he does, but i think that we just need to bring it down, all right? >> take it to reality? >> get the euphoria of the moment, but let's bring it down and keep it real. one, it is georgia. it is georgia with herschel walker as his opponent. a different republican, you have a different election i think. you may not even have a runoff after the november election. the first time. i think that we need to understand the playground we are on here. there are important lessons for both parties, i think in the take away from tonight beginning with the democrats.

you are now open the door, how do you move into this, it is to begin to move this very red state, still, look at the map, all right, look at the map. the fact that you saw were not perform better in those red outlying district counties, those are good signs. it means republicans there, you can reach, think about, that for the gop, stop doing stupid. stop putting up candidates that you know them well can't even articulate a campaign, let alone run one. >> here is a thing about walker. you have got some races in this midterm, mastriano for instance, where it was really a trump thing. like, the local party, other folks were not really behind mastriano, in pennsylvania, he had a trump endorsement. herschel walker was not that. herschel walker was trump's idea, but it was mitch mcconnell, lindsey graham, rick scott, and everyone got on board to clear that field to get behind herschel walker. so many people own, not just donald trump, many people,

there are many fathers of this defeat to invert the old saying. >> i mean, joy has been saying it and i am just going to echo what the great joy reid has been saying. republicans in georgia thought that black people were just going to vote for a black candidate. and we have to be real and talk about how it is not just representation, we want substitute representation. raphael warnock i think is substantive representation for black voters in georgia. and that is why they, and others were not -- it was painful for many people across the country, and myself included as a black woman who worked in democratic politics for a very long time, to see herschel walker sitting at interviews with handlers who are sitting members of the united states senate, white sitting members of the united states senate because they felt as though he could not handle it. that sends a message. people were paying attention to that. i also want to take a point, and shout out the organizers. before we walked in here, the

congresswoman from the fighting fifth that she just told you all in the panel, she called, she is a chair of the georgia democratic party. she said i told you all, my district was going to show up, and she said that this is a message to all of the people who are thumbing their nose at georgia being included in the dnc primaries top five. she told me to tell the people that they are coming. >> no state has made a better case for itself earlier in the primary, in the calendar for the democratic party in georgia. >> this is also not the beginning of them for the georgia democratic party. this is a long several years running. back in 18, they flipped georgia. back in 2019, they won more seats. they won 40 municipal seats. they flip those over the last few years. it is 28 years since a democrat won a state wide election in georgia and they did that in 2020. so look, they have been doing this over several years. it is not fully read, i would say, it is maroon, it is purple, i'm not sure, but they have

been doing the work there. you see it in the organizing and how they have been able to turn on people and some of these red or counties. >> let me just come back to this thing, simone, because it is -- the walker candidacy would manifest -- there was no reason for this individual to be a united states senator. he was a high school football player, a -- who had been donald trump's celebrity apprentice, right? >> it was like the republicans were testing the boundaries of extremity. in terms of like -- how far can we push it is what this whole thing is about. >> but that requires intelligence. >> you're, right you're right. >> no one engineer that. no one thought about it. donald trump called it and said i want him. and he said i remember him, he likes me, i can know he says nice things about me, i want him to be the nominee. and instead of the leadership, and mccullough knows better here, instead of them saying you know mister president, we appreciate that but we are not

doing that. this is a chance for us to make an important statement and in road because the senate is on the line, right? the politics dictates, all of the analytics we see in football right now, where you go for it, you don't go for, it politics is the same kind of analytics. you get to a certain point and you look at the game plan go no, we have got to put the right candidate in the right spot to do the right thing. >> you don't need a computer -- in the case of drafting your candidate. >> i take that point, i take that point. but when you are looking at it from the perch of a mcconnell who is despite what you may think or feel about him a very good strategist in positioning his candidates for the office. the outlier was this race for him. and they were all a part of it and here is the test going forward, will they be a part of it in the next cycle? because there is more trump crazy to come.

>> that is exactly right. this is the big thing coming up tonight. there are all of these different things. the stakes, the representation of the people of georgia. the democratic party having a political license and political infrastructure. there is a question about donald trump in the republican party, specifically which is how many seats and how many losses are you going to let this guy hang on your neck? that is three senate losses. three senate losses that he hung on your neck in two years, and you know, i don't know, nicole said it, right there is no smoke filled room for people to get together and be like, we're not having it. but i don't know, man. the last thing that she won in the world is him as a senator. >> you know, maybe celebrity candidates are not the answer here. that may be a lesson to take away from it. >> maybe candid it matters, and shut up to the organizers who were on the ground. multi ethnic, multi generational, asian american advocacy fund, folks were on the ground. the new georgia project, we have not talked enough about the work and the coalitions.

i would like to give a shout out to killer mike because he had a lot of smoke for having a meeting with brian kemp and it is my understanding that he really did the work with the warnock campaign. and the churches. set out to that coalition in georgia because that is why i think democrats and voters across the state in georgia can just breathe a sigh of relief tonight. >> one last thing on that, i think it is important to also note that democrats did a good job in proving on the game plan that they needed to but republicans played a role in that and i think it is something that will tweak the party a little bit. because we lost republicans in this race. >> jen psaki, simone sanders, michael steele, thank you so much. rachel, back to you. >> thank you very much, much appreciated. we are coming up on the top of the hour. where georgia voters have just made a historic choice in the united states senate race tonight between incumbent democratic senator raphael warnock, and his republican challenger, herschel walker.

nbc news projects that raphael warnock has won reelection. has won an election to his first full term as a united states senator. this makes him the first african american men elected to a first -- sorry, to a full term in the united states senate from the great state of georgia. we have been watching these results come in over the course of the night, this was very, very close as we saw it. you see the distance between the two candidates right now, as we watch those come in, we are looking live at warnock headquarters. we are expecting in the next few minutes senator warnock to make remarks, although we do not yet see him on the stage. although we did have a statement released from the democratic leader of the united states senate, chuck schumer, he released the statement. it says, raphael warnock's victory shows once again that democrats are in sync with america, and maga republicans are not. reverend warnock's well earned when it's not just a victory for georgia but also for democracy, as the last breaking

our firewall against extremist maga republican policies that threaten the very essence of our democracy, tonight we celebrate from my friend rafael, for his beloved state of georgia, for a democratic senate, and most of all for our country. tomorrow, we will roll up our sleeves and get back to work. as you can see, people are onstage now getting ready for what we expect will be, from what we will expect will be a victory speech by raphael warnock. again tonight, nbc news has projected that the winner of this senate race in the united states senate seat in georgia's raphael warnock, the democratic incumbent defeating his republican challenger, herschel walker. steve kornacki, we know what the result is now, we have been watching with you over the course of the night as these results have come in. what can you tell us about how this ultimately came down, what was the bottom line story here about how warnock won? >> yeah. i think there are a couple of stories within