Democrats have won both Georgia Senate seats - and with them, the US Senate majority - serving President Donald Trump a stunning defeat in his last days in office while dramatically improving the fate of President-elect Joe Biden's progressive agenda.
As final votes were counted on Wednesday, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic challengers who represented the diversity of their party's evolving coalition, have defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler two months after Mr Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992.
Mr Warnock, who served as pastor for the same Atlanta church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. preached, becomes the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate. And Mr Ossoff becomes the state's first Jewish senator and, at 33 years old, the Senate's youngest member.
Their success is a symbol of a striking shift in Georgia's politics as the swelling number of diverse, college-educated voters flex their power in the heart of the Deep South.
The unusually high stakes transformed Georgia, once a solidly Republican state, into one of the nation's premier battlegrounds for the final days of Mr Trump's presidency - and likely beyond.
In an emotional address early Wednesday, Mr Warnock vowed to work for all Georgians whether they voted for him or not, citing his personal experience with the American dream. His mother, he said, used to pick "somebody else's cotton" as a teenager.
Georgia's other runoff election pitted Mr Perdue, a 71-year-old former business executive who held his Senate seat until his term expired on Sunday, against Mr Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist.
"This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of this state - for all the people of this state," Mr Ossoff said in a speech broadcast on social media.
"Whether you were for me, or against me, I'll be for you in the US Senate. I will serve all the people of the state."
