A pastor who spent the past 15 years at the helm of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Warnock defeated current Republican Rep. Kelly Loeffler. It was a tough fuck up against outgoing President Donald Trump, who made one of his last trips to office in Georgia to rally his loyal base behind Loeffler and the Republican running for the other seat, David Perdue.
Now the focus shifts to the second race between Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff. Candidates were locked in a tight race and it was too early to call a winner. Under Georgian law, a final candidate may request a count when the election margin is less than or equal to 0.5 percentage points.
If Ossoff wins, Democrats will have full control of Congress, which will strengthen the position of President-elect Joe Biden as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20.
Warnock’s victory is a symbol of a striking shift in Georgia’s politics, as the growing number of diverse, college-educated voters flexes their power in the heart of the deep south. It follows Biden’s victory in November, when he became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lead the state since 1992.
Warnock, 51, acknowledged his unlikely victory in a message to supporters early Wednesday, citing his family’s experience with poverty. His mother, he said, used to harvest someone else’s “cotton” when he was a teenager.
“The other day, because it’s America, the 82-year-old hands that used to harvest someone else’s cotton chose their young son to be a U.S. senator,” he said. “Tonight we have shown with hope, work and the people by our side, anything is possible.”
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The Associated Press declared Warnock a winner after an analysis of the pending votes showed there was no way Loeffler could catch up. Warnock’s advantage is likely to grow as more ballots are counted, many of which were in democratic-leaning areas.
Loeffler refused to concede in a brief message to supporters shortly after midnight.
“We have work to do here. It’s an inch game. We’ll win this election,” insisted Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate less than a year ago by the state governor.
Loeffler, who remains Georgia’s senator until the results of Tuesday’s election are over, said she would return to Washington Wednesday morning to join a small group of senators who planned to challenge the Congressional vote to certify victory. of Biden.
“We will continue to fight for you,” Loeffler said, “It’s about protecting the American dream.”
Georgia’s other election pitted Perdue, a 71-year-old former business executive who took his seat in the Senate until his term expired on Sunday, against Ossoff, a former congressman aide and journalist. At just 33, Ossoff would be the youngest member of the Senate.
Trump’s false claims of voter fraud cast a dark shadow over the election that was held only because no candidate reached the 50% threshold in the general election. He attacked the head of state elections on the eve of the election and raised the possibility that some votes would not be counted, even when voting was held on Tuesday afternoon.
Republican state officials on the ground did not report any significant problems.
SEE ALSO: What do you need to know about the second Senate election in Georgia?
This week’s election marks the formal end of the turbulent 2020 election season more than two months after the rest of the nation finished voting. Unusually high stakes transformed Georgia, once a solid Republican state, into one of the nation’s top battlefields during the last days of Trump’s presidency, and probably beyond.
Both contests checked whether the political coalition that pushed Biden’s victory in November was an anti-Trump anomaly or part of a new electoral landscape. To win Tuesday’s election and in the future, Democrats needed strong African-American support.
Based on its popularity among black voters, among other groups, Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by about 12,000 votes out of the 5 million cast in November.
Trump’s claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, while having no merit, resonated among Republican voters in Georgia. About 7 out of 10 agreed with his false claim that Biden was not the legitimately elected president, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of more than 3,600 voters in the by-elections.
Election officials across the country, including Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, as well as former Trump Attorney General William Barr, have confirmed that there was no widespread fraud in the November election. Almost all of the legal challenges Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two thrown by the Supreme Court, where three Trump-appointed judges preside.
Even with Trump’s claims, voters from both parties were drawn to the polls because of the big bet. AP VoteCast found that 6 out of 10 Georgia voters say party control in the Senate was the most important factor in their vote.
Even before Tuesday, Georgia had shattered its turnout record in a second round with more than 3 million votes in the mail or during face-to-face early voting in December. Including Tuesday’s vote, ultimately, more people voted in the 2016 Georgia presidential election.
In the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, Kari Callaghan, 37, said she voted “all Democrat” on Tuesday, an experience that was new to her.
“I’ve always been a Republican, but Trump has disgusted me quite a bit and the way Republicans work,” he said. “I feel like the Republican candidates are staying there with Trump and the campaign with Trump feels pretty rotten. These are not the conservative values that I grew up with.”
But Will James, 56, said he voted “GOP Direct.”
He said he was concerned about Republican candidates’ recent support for Trump’s challenges to the results of the presidential election in Georgia, “but it didn’t really change the reasons I voted.”
“I believe in the balance of power and I don’t want either party to hold a referendum, basically,” he said.
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Peoples reported from New York. Bynum reported from Savannah, GA. Associated Press writers Haleluya Hadero, Angie Wang, Sophia Tulp, Ben Nadler, and Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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