Saturday 03 / May / 2025
A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Raphael Warnock defeated Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, US media predicted on Wednesday.
The results of the neck-and-neck races will have a major impact on the course of Joe Biden's presidency and his ability to pass legislation through the US Congress.
The election has also drawn an international spotlight on the state following November's tumultuous US presidential election.
Vote counting stopped in many parts of the state overnight with results expected on Wednesday afternoon (local time).
The race between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff remains too early to call.
As of 2:15 a.m. Wednesday, Ossoff had a lead margin of less than 0.2%, reported news agency AP.
Georgia's first black senator
With the win, Warnock has become the first Black senator in his state's history.
He acknowledged his improbable victory in a message to supporters early Wednesday, citing his family's experience with poverty.
"The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton picked her youngest son to be a United States senator," he said, referring to his mother.
"Tonight, we proved with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible."
Loeffler refused to concede in a brief message to supporters shortly after midnight.
Why is this race important?
Once a solidly Republican state, Georgia in 2020 chose a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992. Joe Biden won the state by a thin margin of just under 12,000 votes.
However, none of the four candidates for Senate on Election Day in November won more than 50% of the vote for Georgia's two seats, which automatically resulted in a runoff. Since then, both Republicans and Democrats have been pouring millions of dollars into campaigns, as Georgia's seats will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate.
If Democrats flip Georgia's both Senate seats currently held by Republicans, it would split the chamber 50-50, giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris a tiebreaking vote in passing legislation. If Republicans win the second runoff, their party would have a 51-49 advantage in the upper house of US Congress.
As legislative cooperation between Democrats and Republicans has been deadlocked in recent years, Democrat control of the Senate is seen as being critical for the fate of incoming President Joe Biden's agenda.
Who are the candidates?
In one contest, incumbent Republican Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman, faced Democrat Warnock, 51.
The other contest, puts 71-year-old Republican Perdue, a former businessman, against Democrat 33-year-old Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist. If Ossoff wins, he would be the youngest member of the Senate.
What have Trump and Biden said?
On Monday, both Trump and Biden held rallies in Georgia to encourage supporters to get out and vote.
"This is it. It's a new year, and tomorrow can be a new day for Atlanta, for Georgia and for America,'' Biden said at a drive-in rally in the state's capital Monday.
Trump held a rally Monday night in rural northern Georgia. The outgoing president called the runoff one of the "most important elections" in US history, while reiterating his unsubstantiated claims that the presidential election was "rigged" and there was "no way" he lost Georgia.
"The Democrats are trying to steal the White House, you cannot let them," the president said. "You just can't let them steal the US Senate, you can't let it happen.''
"The stakes in this election could not be higher," Trump told the crowd of several thousand supporters at an air field near the town of Dalton.
