Georgia Senate elections live updates: Jon Ossoff projected to win Ga. Senate seat

Warnock, a prominent Black preacher who leads the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church, secured a barrier-breaking victory in Georgia on Tuesday night. 

The native-born son, who delivers sermons from the pulpit that once belonged to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will become the first Black senator from Georgia -- a feat that closes out an election cycle dominated by the role of race in politics. 

He is only the second Black senator elected from the south since Reconstruction, and among a rare class of 10 Black Americans who have served in the upper chamber.

ABC News projected just before 2 a.m. that Warnock will topple Loeffler, a prominent Republican donor and staunch ally of President Trump who earned political office after being appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to the seat.

In the remaining Georgia Senate race between Ossoff and Perdue, there is less than 1% separating the two candidates and so, the race is too close to project.

-ABC News' Kendall Karson

Up by roughly 35,000 votes statewide, Warnock declared victory in Georgia with a virtual speech to supporters in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

"The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” Warnock said.  

ABC News has not made a projection on the race, but if Warnock wins, the native-born son, who delivers sermons from the pulpit that once belonged to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will become the first Black senator from Georgia. 

“So I come before you tonight as a man who knows that the improbable journey that led me to this place in the historic moment in America could only happen here,” Warnock continued. “May my story be an inspiration to some young person who is trying to grasp and grab hold of the American dream.”

Taking a page from President-elect Joe Biden's playbook, Warnock went on to say he'd be a senator for those who didn't vote for him as much as for those who did support him.

“To everyone out there struggling today, whether you voted for me or not, know this, I hear you, I see you. And every day I'm in the United States Senate, I will fight for you,” he said.

While trailing her opponent by roughly 35,000 votes, Loeffler delivered remarks in the early hours of Wednesday morning projecting confidence in her race and insisting she still had a path to victory.

"This is a game of inches. We're going to win this election," Loeffler told a crowd of supporters in Buckhead. 

"I'm not going to stop working. In the morning, in fact, I'm going to be heading to Washington, D.C., to keep fighting. We're going to keep fighting for this president," Loeffler said, teasing the counting of the Electoral College vote in Congress on Wednesday, which nearly a dozen GOP senators plan to object to.

Her opponent, Warnock, began speaking moments after she finished. Warnock and Ossoff did not hold large watch parties due to COVID-19 concerns.

While Loeffler and Perdue have carried the lead in the Senate races for most of the night, with the bulk of votes in DeKalb County coming in, Warnock is leading Loeffler statewide, and Ossoff is close behind Perdue.

In DeKalb County, a Democratic stronghold where a massive amount of votes came in, Ossoff currently leads 82.5% to Perdue’s 17.5%. Warnock leads 83.2% to Loeffler’s 16.8%.

"Now you may be asking why is Warnock not doing much better than Ossoff?" said ABC News Chief National Affairs Correspondent Tom Llamas. "If you essentially come out and you look at all the counties that surround Atlanta, Warnock is over-performing Ossoff by about 2,000 votes so far in each of those counties."

According to the secretary of state’s website hosting the unofficial election results, there were at least 1,231,662 votes cast on Tuesday that have been counted so far -- a high turnout for runoff elections.

-ABC News' Meg Cunningham, Kendall Karson and Quinn Scanlan