i would. let me tell, you president trump s my friend. let s go now to reporters who are in georgia for tonight s debate, nbc news correspondent, alison barber, and new york times political reporter, maya king. thank you for joining us. alison, let me start with you. basically, what was each campaign hoping to achieve through tonight s debate, and what are they saying afterwards about whether they achieved it? going into the debate night, we were expecting to hear herschel walker make an aggressive push to try and tie senator warnock to president joe biden. joe biden does not have a very high approval rating in the state, in a poll, by the agency, back in september, among lightly georgia voters. the president s approval rating overall was 37%. we ve seen walker do that throughout the campaign, when i was speaking to sources close to the walker campaign. they were adamant that he was going to aggressively make that point tonight. we saw him try to bring that up a number of times.
to begin this coming monday. it is the peach state where we start tonight with our breaking news. a head to head televised showdown this evening between democratic senator raphael warnock, and his republican challenger, herschel walker. all year, the georgia senate race has been one of the most closely watched in the country, but that has been even more true that ever over the last ten days. it began with that reporting first from the daily beast by the new york times, that walker had pushed for and paid for his then girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009, a charge that walker has denied. since that reporting, this has become the question when it comes to the battle for control of the senate. will it cost walker the voters? if it does, will it cost republicans a seat they may need to win if they re going to gain control of the senate? we knew that topic was going to come up tonight, it did, here s how it played out. your former girlfriend made
right now, his prominence, unusual for a former president? is he a hindrance to republican efforts? yeah, no, absolutely, he is. he s not the most important issue in the election. georgia is going to be interesting, because that kemp margin is going to matter. it seems like it s likely to beat stacey abrams, 52, you know, with the big victory. if it gets up 53, 54, then you could see him, potentially, pulling herschel walker over the top, and over 50%, and avoiding a runoff. i don t think they re going to be warnock voters, it s going to be a fallout on the kemp vote, obviously. it will be an under, oath may be kemp, a libertarian candidate. i don t think many people are going to be pulling the lever for brian kemp and raphael no warnock. by the way, governor kemp has proven himself on most politicians. rich flowery, david plouffe, thank you for joining. and i appreciate it. up next, we are talking about, it that 50/50 senate. we re going to go deep on all the battleground states
d.c., work he says is directly helping voters here in georgia. also highlight some of the bipartisan legislation that he has worked on. we saw him do that tonight. it was a very interesting, quick, back and forth debate, both sides are already declaring victory. i have my phone out because i ve been texting the sources from both campaigns. warnock s side, they feel like he did a very good job tonight. his campaign manager, already released a statement saying, in part, there is no question reverend warnock won tonight s debate, and showed georgians the reason they elected him in the first place well herschel walker offered no solutions, light, and proved, once again, he isn t ready to represent georgians. walker s campaign manager tweeted he dominated the debate tonight, he had campaign surrogates in the spin room after singing his praises. i got a text from another walker campaign source, that s the word they used again, dominated on warnock side, a source close to his campaign, when i
to be something we thought might be extinct in politics in georgia, split to get voters. folks voting for brian kemp, but they re not voting for herschel walker, at least not at this moment, in the senate race, but instead going for raphael warnock. is that a dynamic that s going to persist until election day? let s talk more about those dynamics in georgia now, joining us is charles a political science professor at the university of. georgia professor, thank you for joining us. i appreciate it. you know the lay of the land in georgia, you saw that debate tonight, you have a sense of the electorate, i am curious, do you think that anything that happened in that debate tonight will affect this election, one way or another? i don t think anything that happened tonight will make a dramatic change. now on, apparently, made a statement which a missile statement kind of thing which then becomes the news, the kind of thing that may work its way to a political ad if something says somethin