FiveThirtyEight’s top politics stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular In Politics] Thursday, December 8, 2022 [1. How Either Candidate Could Win Georgia’s Senate Runoff]( [GA-RUNOFF-22-4×3]( Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker are headed to a runoff in Georgia’s Senate race next week after neither surpassed the 50 percent threshold required by state law to win outright. But will it be a repeat of last year’s runoff — when Warnock and fellow Democratic then-candidate Sen. Jon Ossoff narrowly defeated their Republican rivals? Or are we heading for an election that makes 2021 look like an outlier? [Read more]( [2. What Can The 2022 Midterms Tell Us About 2024?]( [A sketch of Geoff's head against an orange background. A word bubble reads "The permanent campaign is more permanent than ever."]( Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. [Read more]( [3. When Democracy Was On The Ballot In 2022, Voters Usually Chose It]( [A yard sign for Arizona governor-elect Katie Hobbs that reads "Stop the chaos. Protect elections."]( Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, made denying the results of the 2020 election central to her campaign this year. And while she hasn’t yet conceded, she lost that race to Democrat Katie Hobbs. It was one of the most high-profile examples of a pattern we saw over and over again in the midterms: When election deniers ran for offices that have significant oversight over elections themselves, voters rejected them. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Forecasts Latest Senate Forecast [2022 Senate Forecast]( Latest House Forecast [2022 House Forecast]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: How Democrats Won The Georgia Runoff]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.