A month out from the midterm elections, it’s becoming increasingly likely that the fate of the Senate won’t be final until January. 

That’s because, if everything else breaks as polling suggests it will, control of the upper chamber will once again hinge on Georgia, a state on track for a runoff election.

This year, Republicans will only need to net one seat to take control of the evenly divided Senate. Democrats simply need to hold their own to maintain control.

In a typical midterm, netting one seat would be an easy task for the Republicans with high inflation, a recession looming, and an unpopular president.

This year, however, it’s looking like netting one seat is a tall task, mostly because the GOP has put up underperforming candidates in key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

While the party’s nominee in Ohio, venture capitalist J.D. Vance, looks poised to score a narrow victory, maintaining a 1.2 point lead according to the RealClearPolitics average of polling, the party’s picks in other states are not faring so well.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee, Dr. Mehmet Oz, is trailing in the polls, and though the race is tightening up he is still behind by 4.3 points on average.

His already battered public image in the state has not been helped by a report from Jezebel alleging that scientific experiments supervised by Dr. Oz while he worked at Columbia University caused the death of more than 329 dogs.

If Democrats flip the seat in Pennsylvania, as they look poised to do, Republicans would have to flip Nevada to stay competitive, which also looks increasingly likely.

The Republican nominee and secretary of state there, Adam Laxalt, has edged out a modest lead of 1.2 points over his Democratic rival, incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polling.

If Republicans win in Nevada then, assuming there are no upsets and no other seats are flipped, Republicans will sit at 50 seats and Democrats will control 49 seats.

In this situation, all eyes will turn to Georgia, where Senator Warnock, a Democrat, is currently leading Herschel Walker in the polls, thanks in no small part to the fact that Mr. Walker’s campaign has been marred by scandal.

Throughout the campaign Mr. Walker has been rocked by gaffes, lies, and allegations of domestic abuse that seemed to only moderately affect his campaign.

This week, however, the scandals have been cranked up a notch by a report by the Daily Beast alleging that Mr. Walker paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009 and Mr. Walker’s reaction to it.

Mr. Walker denied the allegation claiming that it was a fabricated attack on him by Democrats and that he did not know the woman in question. 

The Daily Beast then reported that the woman is in fact the mother of one of the three children Mr. Walker has had out of wedlock. The recent reports have also lead to an unflattering public feud with Mr. Walker’s son, Christian Walker.

In a sign of internal strife in the campaign, Mr. Walker’s campaign has fired its political director, Taylor Crowe, who was thought to have leaked information to members of the media, according to CNN.

Despite the recent scandal, Republican leadership has signaled that they are still all-in on Mr. Walker, with the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniels, saying that the organization would continue to invest in his campaign.

The president of the Senate Leadership Fund, Steven Law, also said that the organization, which is closely aligned with Minority Leader McConnell, is  “full steam ahead” in Georgia.

Since the story broke, Mr. Walker has sunk in the polls, with the RealClearPolitics average going from a 1.1 point lead for Mr. Warnock at the end of September to a 3.8 point lead for Mr. Warnock on October 6.

A professor of political science at the University of Georgia, Charles Bullock, tells the Sun that these scandals may not sway too many voters, but even a small number could be enough in a tight race.

“Some share of Republicans will refuse to vote for Herschel Walker and might vote for the Libertarian,” he tells the Sun. “Each new revelation is the last straw for some Republican voters.”

Others expect Mr. Walker’s numbers to make a quicker recovery, such as a professor of political science at John Jay College, Brian Arbour.

“I’m skeptical these scandals will have much of an effect on the race,” he said. “Warnock is still not polling at 50 percent.”

That 50 percent threshold is important because, in Georgia, a runoff election is automatically triggered when no candidate receives an outright majority of the vote, something both Messers Bullock and Arbour see as rather likely.

While a runoff could end up working to either Mr. Walker or Mr. Warnock’s advantage, it would extend the midterm elections into January of 2023, just as the Georgia runoff pushed the resolution of the 2020 midterms into 2021.