Primary election updates: Brad Raffensperger wins Georgia primary

Stacey Abrams, a Black Democrat running for Georgia governor, declined on Tuesday to directly comment on Republican David Perdue saying she should "go back to where she came from."

"No, not at all," Abrams, said at a news conference in Atlanta, when asked by ABC News whether she wanted to respond to what was widely labeled as racist remarks from Perdue on Monday night while giving a campaign speech in which he also charged she was "demeaning her own race."

"I will say this," Abrams told ABC News at Tuesday's press conference. "I have listened to Republicans for the last six months attack me. But they've done nothing to attack the challenges facing Georgia. They've done nothing to articulate their plans for the future of Georgia. Their response to a comment on their record is to deflect and to pretend that they've done good for the people of Georgia."

Perdue, running to get the GOP nomination for Georgia governor, seized on Abram's comments last week that Georgia was "worst state in the country to live," citing residents' disparities in mental health and maternal mortality, among other issues.

"She ain't from here. Let her go back to where she came from," Perdue, a former senator challenging Gov. Brian Kemp for their party's nomination, said at a campaign event in the Atlanta suburbs on Monday night. "She doesn't like it here."

A historic number of people have voted early in Georgia’s primary elections. According to the secretary of state’s office, approximately 857,401 people voted in-person or through an absentee ballot as of Friday -- roughly three times as many as at the same point in the 2018 midterm election cycle.

Republicans are touting increased voter turnout as proof a controversial election law signed last year wasn’t as restrictive as its opponents described, while Democrats say the numbers are indicative of public pushback to the legislation.

“I think it tells us that Georgia voters got the message and the message was, ‘We gotta go vote, and we've got to go vote early, and we've got to go vote in person,’” Bee Nguyen, the leading Democratic candidate for secretary of state, told ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks.

Here’s what time polls close in each state on Tuesday. All times Eastern.

Georgia: 7 p.m.
Alabama: 8 p.m.
Texas: 8 p.m. in most of the state, 9 p.m. in the western tip
Arkansas: 8:30 p.m.
Minnesota: 9 p.m

Tuesday’s primary elections, stretching across four Southern states, will continue to test Republican voters’ appetite for former President Donald Trump and his push of the “big lie.”

Nowhere is that more apparent than in Georgia as Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger -- two Republicans who balked at Trump’s requests to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race -- face challenges from enthusiastic proponents of Trump’s baseless election claims. Kemp is hoping to fight off former Sen. David Perdue, while Raffensperger is looking to rebuff Rep. Jody Hice.

Another high-profile contest in the Peach State will be the Senate primary, where football star Herschel Walker is running for the Republican nomination to likely challenge Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock. Trump-endorsed Walker has been leading the pack despite several controversies, including prior accusations of domestic violence. (Walker has denied some of the allegations and said he doesn't remember others.)

For Democrats, the most-watched race of the night will be a runoff in Texas’ 28th Congressional District as 29-year-old immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros tries for a third time to unseat nine-term incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar. The heated primary is the first clear test of how abortion rights may motivate voters this election cycle, given Cuellar’s position as the sole anti-abortion Democrat in the House.

And in Georgia, two Democratic incumbents -- Rep. Lucy McBath and Rep. Carolyn Bordeaux -- are running against each other because of redistricting.