Georgia Senate Runoffs: Live Updates

Democrat Raphael Warnock is the winner in his race against Republican Kelly Loeffler for a Georgia Senate seat, the AP declared overnight.

He becomes the first black senator in Georgia history.

The race between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff remains too close to call – but if Ossoff can pull it off, Democrats will claim the narrowest of majorities in the Senate.

In a streamed speech, Raphael Warnock declared himself the winner of the Georgia special election runoff, saying that “I am going to the Senate to work for all of Georgia, no matter who you cast your vote for in this election.”

“We were told that we couldn’t win this election,” Warnock said. “But tonight, we proved that with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible. May my story be an inspiration to some young person who is trying to grasp and grab hold to the American Dream.”

In a brief speech, Kelly Loeffler refused to concede, saying that “we’re gonna win this election.”

“There are a lot of votes out there, we have a path to victory, and we’re staying on it,” she elaborated.

“This is the third election in which Donald Trump has made himself the sole focus of a campaign, and the third election that Democrats won new voters and had fantastic turnout: 2018, 2020, and now 2021.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty’s latest: Blame Everything, but Especially Trump

Raphael Warnock is slated to be the first Georgia Senate candidate to give a speech on election night. He currently leads Kelly Loeffler by 35,000 votes with 95 percent reporting.

Both Henry Olsen and David Wasserman expect David Perdue to be unseated by Jon Ossoff.

Additional votes from Newton County (Atlanta suburbs) are recorded and David Perdue’s lead over Jon Ossoff is trimmed to a mere 456 votes.

Chatam County, though it is done counting votes for the night, did just release a batch of ballots, which trimmed Perdue's lead to 9,000 votes.

The promised batch of votes in DeKalb county just dropped, putting Warnock up over Loeffler by nearly 20,000 votes, while David Perdue’s lead has been trimmed to approximately 16,000. 95 percent of the total statewide vote is in.

Chatam County, Georgia — home of Savannah — has finished counting votes for the night, according to multiple reports. It still has approximately 20,000 outstanding votes.

There appears to be a discrepancy in how many votes are left in DeKalb county . . .

County official Mike Thurmond told CNN that there are only 130,000 outstanding votes — 40,000 less than what most expected. But Georgia voting system implementation manager Gabriel Sterling later said that there were, in fact, 171,000 more votes to upload from DeKalb.