Analysts say Walker has made himself an easy target for political attacks, with disjointed comments on issues from COVID-19 to climate. For instance, he attacked the recently-passed $430 billion climate and drug bill on Sunday, saying a lot of the money is “going to trees” and asking, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Don’t we have enough trees around here?”

“Every time he opens his mouth about a policy issue, it sounds like a word salad. It’s very convoluted and doesn’t make sense sometimes,” said Trey Hood, a political science professor at the University of Georgia…

Opinion polls suggest the gap between Walker and Warnock is very narrow, and some have had Walker ahead. But he is considerably less popular in surveys than other Georgia Republicans, including Governor Brian Kemp, who is up for re-election this year. That, analysts said, suggests that some Republican voters who cast ballots for Kemp could just opt not to vote for a Senate candidate — or to back Warnock instead.

Warnock was well known in the state, too, before he was elected to the Senate, as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King once preached. Strategists say that could appeal to Georgia’s large Christian electorate.