The (sort of) good news for Herschel Walker in a new CNN poll is that he’s just outside the margin of error in his Tuesday runoff with Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) in Georgia. The poll shows Warnock at 52 percent and Walker at 48 percent in a Senate race that will decide whether Democrats have a 50-50 majority or a 51-49 majority.

The bad news is just about everything else in the poll. Indeed, if Walker is able to pull it off — which remains a possibility, for reasons we’ll get to — it will be despite himself and his highly flawed candidacy.

The poll confirms what others have: that like many GOP Senate candidates this year, voters simply don’t like him very much. What’s more, they clearly don’t see him as a particularly capable statesman.

While the head-to-head is close, a number of other measures reinforce that many people who might vote for Walker will be doing so because of partisanship, while holding their noses.