Democrat Raphael Warnock has unseated Kelly Loeffler in the Georgia Senate election, NBC news projects.
The final votes are being counted in two key Senate runoff elections that will determine control of the US Senate and the fate of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff need to win both races to seize the Senate majority – and control of the new Congress when president-elect Joe Biden takes over.
A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Warnock is projected to defeat Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler by NBC news.
He will become the first black senator in Georgia’s history and his victory will be a symbol of a striking shift in the state’s politics.
Black voters made up approximately 30% of the electorate and almost all of them – 94% – backed Ossoff and Warnock.
Voters under 45 and those earning less than $50,000 also voted for the Democrats, as well as around 60% of recent arrivals – the force behind Atlanta’s sprawling growth.