Democrat Raphael Warnock has claimed a historic victory in his Georgia senate race, saying he and his supporters have proved “anything is possible”.
Speaking in the early hours of Wednesday morning as polls showed him less than half a percentage point ahead of Republican Kelly Loeffler, Mr Warnock did not use the word "victory".
However, as projections showed that the outstanding votes still to be counted were from Democrat-leaning districts, he appeared confident he was on the way to Washington as Georgia’s first ever Black senator.
“Thank you, Georgia,” he said. “I am going to the Senate to work for all of Georgia, no matter who you cast your vote for in this election.”
In his comments, delivered before either of the two races taking place in Georgia had been called, Mr Warnock, a reverend whose father preached with Dr Martin Luther King, said his mother had once picked cotton.
Now, she had used those same hands to vote for her son.
"We were told we couldn’t win this election,” he said. “But tonight, we proved that with hope, hard work and with the people by our side, anything is possible.”
His opponent said she was not conceding.
Republican Kelly Loeffler, who will on Wednesday be among those GOP politicians voting not to certify Joe Biden’s election, told supporters in Atlanta that there was still a way for her to win.
“It’s gonna be another late night, there are a lot of votes out there as you all know, and we have a path to victory and we're staying on it,” she told the crowd. “This is a game of inches, we're gonna win this election.”
She added: “It's worth it for this election to last into tomorrow, we're going to make sure every vote is counted. Every legal vote will be counted.”
CNN pointed out she told her supporters she would be in the nation’s capital, supporting Mr Trump’s last-ditch effort to derail Mr Biden’s victory.
“In the morning in fact I'm going to be heading to Washington, DC, to fight,” she said. “We're gonna fight for this President, so I'm asking for every single Georgian, every single American, stay in the fight with us.”
