Spent now. take a look. democrats including outside groups, $55 million. republicans just $26 million for a total of $81 million in ad spending. boy, my goodness. voter in the state of georgia seeing all of those ads. a bit of deja vu going on here. remember, just last year, the 2021 georgia runoff spending. remember two races in the runoff period, two months, that year over $450 million spent. over the last two years you couldn t turn on a television in georgia or listen to the radio waite hearing one of these ads. a shorter runoff period. just two weeks. how does this compare and the effort seen from both parties? reporter: look at ad spending top five senate races since labor day. again, democrats outsteoutspend republicans.
Powered substations. also, the governor s georgia will join us. and targeting military basis hundreds of miles inside russia. how russia is retaliating ahead. we begin with election day. it s election day, of course. take two, as a matter of fact, in georgia. polls open in one hour. voters decide the runoff between democratic incumbent raphael warnock and challenger her vol walker. president joe biden called in with a message for listeners. every vote is critical, because, look, all of the things that reverend warnock have supported are things that the people of georgia care a great deal about. straight now to atlanta, there you go, outside a polling place. jeff zeleny. good morning to you. candidates making a final pitch to voters last night m.
Of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children. reporter: in fact, senator warnock went on to say herschel walk ker still win this contest and trying to get the word out democrats still need to vote in this race. georgia voters have the last word on this race as polls open in just one hour. lotty, dottie and everybody i haven t heard that signs was a kid. my parents and grandparents used to say that. they would say, call, lottie, dottie and everybody. can t get that out of my head. zelleny, are you still there? reporter: sure. heard a lot of big-named surrogates come out for hoerschl walker and 50 is not the same at 51, we need 51, even though democrats control the senate. can you explain that? reporter: it is a huge deal poppy. this is why.
Need to do the early tabulation. that s one of the great things from the election integrity act. it now allows specifically for the first time they can do early tabulation of the early votes starting at 7:00 a.m. on election day morning. that way by 7:15, 8:00, a lot of the big counties should have the votes in, the absentees in so we don t have these big dumps of votes that concern people. and don t wait until you get all of them dumped. so we have a steady spread of information so people don t freak out over the wild swings. georgia set up a text alert system. what response have you seen during this early voting system? is there cause to be concerned? so far so good. i ve got to tell you, jake. after the primaries in georgia, president trump came and endorsed every one of the incumbents. and every one of the incumbents won. governor kemp thumped his
Certainly not like we saw hutchinson doing about this idea about whether kids should wear masks in school or not. that s for sure. kerry sanders live in florida. thank you. a quick programming note for you, this friday msnbc is answering your questions about going back to school during the pandemic. you probably have a ton of those questions. send them via email. we ll have our experts answer as many as they can. that special report is happening this friday 11:00 eastern only here on msnbc. coming up, former u.s. attorney for georgia set to speak with the senate judiciary committee about former president trump s role in trying to overturn the election results. we ll have that after the break. and we re going to our team on the ground in afghanistan as the taliban takeover intensifies.