With 93% of votes tallied by mid-morning Wednesday, it appeared that Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock and incumbent Kelly Loeffler will square off in a January runoff in the special election for U.S. Senate.
Under Georgia law, a candidate needs at least 50% of the final vote to avoid a runoff. Warnock led on Wednesday with 31.9% of the reported vote to Loeffler’s 26.5%. In all, 20 people were running to fill the Senate seat.
Sen. David Perdue, meanwhile, was leading Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff with 50.8% of the vote. Ossoff trailed with 46.9%, while Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel had 2.3%. With 7% of the vote still uncounted, however, neither the Associated Press nor other major news outlets had declared a winner in the race.
