OnPolitics: How did the GOP lose Georgia? Walker, Trump influence cost Senate seat

Happy Wednesday, OnPolitics readers!

In the final 2022 midterms battle, Georgia voters gave Democrats in the U.S. Senate extra breathing room by reelecting incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock on Tuesday, expanding the party’s slim majority.

Warnock's victory over Republican Herschel Walker, a football star recruited by former President Donald Trump to help the GOP retake the Senate, spells out two lessons — one old and one new, USA TODAY's David Jackson and Mabinty Quarshie report.

The old lesson: Good candidates generally beat bad candidates.

The new one: Trump-backed candidates tend to have trouble in battleground states.

"Trump is the big loser," pollster Frank Luntz said in the wake of the Republicans' latest loss in a major political race. "One by one, his handpicked candidates for Senate flopped. I can’t remember a time when the environment for Republicans was so good and yet the results were so bad."

👀Keep reading: What does Warnock's win and Walker's loss mean for the future?

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: OnPolitics: Walker, with Trump's influence, lost Georgia for the GOP