Walker hugged Kemp at a campaign rally.
The Georgia Senate election is not a normal contest.
Walker didn't run a general election because he didn't appear on the campaign trail with Kemp until last week.
The GOP won every statewide election in Georgia except for Walker, who was the only one who got more than 50% of the votes.
It wasn't hard to see why Kemp and Walker didn't do as well as they could have.
According to CNN exit polling, Warnock won every age group under 45 and had an 11 point advantage with Independents, due to outsized margins in Atlanta's populous suburbs.
Walker couldn't duplicate Kemp's feat of cutting into her margins with Independents in Atlanta's suburbs while earning strong support from both moderate and conservative Republicans.
Walker embraced Kemp because he came out of the general election as the biggest winner in Georgia politics.
The Senate race is close, but some major hurdles remain for Walker, the Republican significantly underperformed Kemp in the general election, and polling continues to show Independents in the corner.
Will it be enough for Kemp to get some voters over to Walker?
In the general election, Kemp defeatedAbrams 53.4%-45.9%, coming out ahead by nearly 300,000 votes, a huge improvement over his victory over the former state lawmaker four years ago.
The governor received over two million votes, compared to over one million votes forAbrams.
In the vote count this year, the only statewide Georgia Democrat to come out ahead was Warnock, who earned over 1 million votes to Walker's 1.918 million.
The results show that Kemp won over 200,000 more votes than Walker and that some voters split their tickets to support the governor.
The site of last week's rally was chosen by Republicans because it is in a city where Democrats have made significant gains over the past decade. The Democratic senator over 50,000 votes in the county was more than the statewide vote difference between the two candidates.
A contrast with Walker's weaker performance in those localities among moderates and college-educated voters was created by the decisive margins delivered by Cobb and other metropolitan Atlanta counties.
Walker won by 3 points compared to Kemp's 14 points. Walker held a rally in the largest city in the county.
The Independents who were on board with Kemp but are wary of Walker are a top target for the governor.
During the general election campaign, Kemp pointed to his early reopening of Georgia's economy during the COVID-19 pandemic and his temporary suspension of the state gas tax to make the case for his reelection.
Kemp, along with GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, refused to allow Donald Trump to overturn the election of Joe Biden in Georgia. Kemp was lambasted by Trump over his defense of the state's election results, with the former president even recruiting David Perdue to run against him in a GOP gubernatorial primary.
While Trump continued to raise grievances against Kemp, the governor leaned into his strong ties with Georgia conservatives, which gave him solid footing among grassroots activists for the general election.
Walker ran a general election campaign heavily tailored to base Republicans, including evangelical voters who have powered GOP wins in the state. He accuses Democrats of dividing the country by race and rails against the use of pronouns in the military.
Kemp flew around Georgia with most of the statewide GOP candidates, but Walker wasn't one of them.
Kemp said that the GOP Senate nominee was part of the team even if he wasn't present on the tour.
Kemp held a rally in Georgia where he focused on his economic message and pumped up the party faithful. A few minutes away, in the same city, Walker held a rally with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and a former Housing and Urban Development secretary.
One of the biggest challenges that Walker will face is the fact that Kemp won't be listed on the December ballot, which is the most optimal time for Walker to have benefited from the governor's coattails.
The inability of some Kemp voters to pull the lever for the former University of Georgia football star means that the governor will have to use some of his political capital to continue boosting his fellow Republican.
In a new ad from the Senate Leadership Fund, the governor said that he wouldn't vote for Joe Biden and that he would vote for Georgia.
—Senate Leadership Fund (@Senate_Fund) November 23, 2022
The governor said that he was backing Herschel. I hope you will join me in voting for him as well.
There is a huge benefit for Walker. Conservatives support him.
They've taken to his outsider-centered campaign because they feel like it's roots are in Georgia.
The allegations of Walker paying for two women to have abortions have been dismissed by Republicans.
Independents broke for Democrats like Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Sen.-elect John Fetterman of Pennsylvania in order to carry Walker over the finish line.
McConnell said in the summer that races for the upper chamber often come down to candidates' individuality.
"Senate races are different, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome," the Kentucky Republican stated at the time.
This will be the last consequential test case of the lawmaker's theory.
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