Democrats take control of the Senate

As CNN reported earlier, Republicans were very concerned about the release of votes in the Democratic stronghold of DeKalb County.

Once those results came in and dramatically swung the race in favor of Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock and also narrowed the gap for Democrat Jon Ossoff, GOP operatives conceded that their path to victory was narrow and starting to vanish.

One Georgia Republican said he believed the outstanding vote was too heavily tilted in favor of the Democrats for either Republican to be able to win.

Another Washington Republican operative said the best hope at this point for the GOP is that Perdue can keep the margin close enough that would allow for a recount, but even that seemed unlikely. 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger tonight hailed the state's "tremendous turnout," but warned votes are still coming in from across the state and overseas that might ultimately determine the outcome of the two Senate races.

“Its very close as you can see," Raffensperger said, speaking with CNN's Wolf Blitzer just before midnight. 

Raffensperger, who is a Republican, declined to speculate on how the distribution of uncounted votes might affect the final count, but said unprocessed ballots were "somewhat scattered" across the state.

He also pointed out that up to 17,000 overseas and military ballots would not be counted until Friday at 5 p.m., and indicated that election officials may soon pause counting for the night.

Raffensperger, who is charge of Georgia's elections, hailed the large turnout, saying he believed it could reach nearly 4.6 million once all ballots are counted. In contrast, about 5 million Georgians voted in the 2020 election. 

It's been a "tremendous turnout," he said. 

Watch Raffensperger's interview:

It is a little past midnight, and the margins between the GOP and Democratic candidates remain razor-thin with at least 97% of the votes tallied.

Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock currently is ahead of GOP candidate Kelly Loeffler by more than 35,000 votes.

Meanwhile, GOP candidate David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff both are extremely close.

Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta, has finished counting for the day, leaving just under 4,800 absentee and a small number of military ballots and cured absentee ballots to be counted, county officials said.

The county has counted all Election Day ballots, advance in-person ballots, and most of the absentee by mail ballots have been counted and posted to the secretary of state’s website, county spokesperson Joe Sorenson said. 

The county will begin counting the small number of ballots beginning at 8 a.m. tomorrow.

Democrats Rev. Raphael Warnock has just taken the lead over incumbent GOP Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler.

Warnock currently holds a 32,214-vote lead over Loeffler.

Republican David Perdue's lead has narrowed as more votes trickle in tonight. Here's where things stand:

CNN's Wolf Blitzer has more:

The biggest chunk of outstanding votes is the early in-person voting numbers from DeKalb County, Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia Secretary of State's office, told CNN this evening. Sterling confirmed that 171,000 early in-person votes have not been calculated yet in the county.

DeKalb county is heavily Democratic and played a key role in handing President-elect Joe Biden a victory in the state in the presidential election.

"The largest number of outstanding votes is still right here and those are early in-person votes for DeKalb. This could be good news for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock," CNN's Nick Valencia noted tonight.

DeKalb surpassed in-person, Election Day voting from November today, a spokesperson for the county told CNN earlier this evening.

Watch Sterling's interview:

With at least 91% of estimated votes, the Senate runoff elections are still too close to call and the margins are razor-thin.

Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling told CNN just now that there are still at least 171,000 early in-person votes from Democratic-leaning DeKalb County that haven’t been reported yet.

Incumbent GOP candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are currently ahead Democratic rivals Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

Here's where things stand in both races:

Rev. Raphael Warnock's campaign is eyeing absentee ballot reports tonight to boost their numbers.

As the Democrat's campaign has been doing throughout the night, a senior Warnock campaign aide stressed it is too early to make any predictions with too much of the vote is outstanding.

“Patiently waiting! Not jumping the gun over here," the senior aide said in reaction to the latest numbers.

Here's a look at where things stand right now:

Supervisor of Elections Russell Bridges is predicting the majority of vote tallies from Chatham County will be uploaded to the secretary of state’s office by around 11 p.m. ET. 

“When we finish tonight, we’ll probably have about 3,000 absentee ballots outstanding,” Bridges said.

That does not include counting ballots that can be cured and overseas/military absentee ballots, which are allowed to arrive by Friday.

The official said the Board of Elections is in the process of tabulating everything they have. 

As far as turnout, that is still unclear. Bridges said he would call today’s voting “Steady. It was not heavy.”