republican governor, brian kemp, who has been trying to help herschel walker in this run-off. what are you hearing from kemp s camp? reporter: i think jeff zeleny said that on purpose. he knew i was standing here. it s possible about the early voting, when i was in georgia in recent weeks interviewing governor kemp, i asked him about those republican efforts from the attorney general here. the republican officials in the state who pushed back on that attempt by warnock to get that extra day of early voting, that saturday, remember, after thanksgiving. he actually disagreed with that. he said he thought that was a distraction to push back on that. he said there should have been early voting allowed on that day. we ll see if that affects the number that we see tonight when we re measuring what the early vote looks like compared to the votes today. and that is a message that came from kemp. he pushed a very different message than walker did on the campaign trail in the general election.
so this result can certainly change. but if he does, walker does pull off a win here, it would be a he very significant upset because the view among the republican establishment and everybody down in georgia who s following this race is they thought walker had very little chance of pulling this off. this would be a hyung shot in the arm for republicans if you were to pull off this upset even though it doesn t change the balance of power in the senate. but nevertheless, as republicans acknowledge here, there s a lot more vote to count. a lot more vote to count. but the fact that it is that republicans are seeing again, this is early. we re not even close to done covering and counting the vote. but the fact that they have that image on the screen right now is giving them a glimmer of hope despite the reality and the realistic numbers that they re seeing in the war rooms that they re texting us. and look, it s a tough thing for republicans to be counting on overperforming in the s
there? reporter: absolutely, jake. you can hear the crowd behind me cheering. they re actually singing to a garth brooks song, friends in low places. they re feeling very optimistic about where they are in this moment. particularly as it depends on early or election day voting, i should say. the skepticism remains about the early vote. that is what one of the questions is. is there enough election day turnout to overcome what they believe is a big warnock advantage in early voting? this is why herschel walker has been traveling around the state, campaigning in football themes. we re here in the college football hall of fame. he s been trying to urge people to get off the sidelines and come out and vote. they were anticipating a close race. the campaign strategists are perhaps less optimistic to some degree than some of the supporters. they are looking at some of the other numbers. and they re wondering if they have hit some of the targets in
guy, guys, guys, we re still in session. and i don t know what the heck you re talking about. and the key race alert. raphael warnock, the democratic incumbent senator, has pulled ahead with 72% of the vote in. senator warnock has 50.4% of the
still outstanding? the bigger the circle is, the larger pool of votes that is still out. so you see around atlanta. you see the blue. a lot of votes outstanding that are still waiting to be count. and at the moment, democrats are leading in these places. no guarantee it will stay that way. okay, we re 33,000 behind. there are hundreds of thousands of votes in here. and you re looking at columbus and savannah and saying, okay. if you re the walker campaign, you see, we have some votes out there, too. jeff zeleny was raising a great point and we can t answer it yet. something to watch as we go through the night. these smaller rural counties. you pick a county here. they re at 67%. you see the percentage is 65%. but walker needs raw numbers. these are not big counties but you need every vote to offset atlanta. it s only 1,300 votes. right. almost 3,000 votes right now.