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Troup County saw a massive turnout for the runoff election between Senator Raphael Warnock (D) and Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Just over half of the regular voters in Troup County cast ballots in the runoff.

A total of 21,101 votes were cast in Troup County. That represents 50.71% of Troup County’s 41,609 registered active voters, said Elections Supervisor Andy Harper.

Most of the votes were cast on Election Day with 11,190 votes cast on Tuesday. A total of 8,777 advance votes were accepted and 1,134 voted via absentee ballot. Only 41.6% of voters in Troup advance voted in person, which is fewer than what is typical for the county. Harper said it’s normally about 50-50.

The lower early voting turnout is not unexpected, given that Georgia reduced the number of early voting days in a runoff from a minimum of 17 days to a minimum of five.

Walker won Troup County receiving 12,749 votes (60.5%) compared to Warnock’s 8,332 (39.5%), but narrowly lost the overall race in Georgia. Walker also won early voting in Troup County earning 55.7 percent of the in-person advance votes.

As of Wednesday, over 3.5 million ballots have been counted in the overall senate race with final totals still being tabulated.

The 2022 runoff turnout saw a sharp decline compared to the 2020 runoff between Senate candidates Warnock and incumbent Kelly Loeffler (R). About 4.5 million votes were cast in the Warnock-Loeffler runoff.

Locally, half of LaGrange had another runoff on the ballot between District 2 candidates. Leon Childs faced off against Quay Boddie in a special election to fill the council seat vacated by the late LeGree McCamey, who passed away unexpectedly in January.

Childs won the runoff, earning 1,529 votes (58%) over Boddie’s 1,094 (42%). That race had a 38.58% turnout of 2,623 votes cast from 7,600 active voters.

Harper said the elections office is still evaluating 18 provisional votes. He said they also still have a few outstanding absentee ballots sent out to military members, which still could be received and counted, but they may not be returned.

Neither the provisional votes nor the outstanding military absentee ballots would change the results.