The outcome of a closely watched and bitterly contested governor’s race in Georgia hung in the balance in the early hours of Wednesday morning as the Democrat, Stacey Abrams, refused to concede the election and her Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, did not claim victory.
Abrams, vying to become America’s first female African American governor, trailed Kemp by just under 100,000 votes out of more than 3.8m votes counted, and her campaign maintained there were still enough ballots left to count to take the race to a runoff election.
Kemp did not declare outright victory as Luke Bryan’s country song Chuggin’ Along blasted through the speakers. Rather, he avoided mentioning the specific results, saying: “We have votes to count but we have a very strong lead.” He added: “I’m confident victory is near” as he mentioned the math looked good for his side.
In a rousing speech at the Regency Ballroom in Atlanta, Abrams vowed to make sure “every vote is counted”. Her team said tens of thousands of absentee and provisional ballots could mean Kemp would not take the required 50% to claim victory outright.
“Democracy only works when we work for it. When we fight for it. When we demand it,” Abrams said. “And apparently, today, when we stand in lines for hours to meet it at the ballot box.”
The race in Georgia, a state in the deep south that Donald Trump won by 5.16 percentage points in 2016, was among the most closely watched in the US midterms. Abrams, who ran a progressive campaign reliant on grassroots activism, was pitted against Kemp, a longtime Trump loyalist who controversially continued to serve as the secretary of state, in charge of elections, throughout the campaign amid renewed allegations of voter suppression.
Abrams and Kemp drew some of the biggest names in US politics to their campaigns: Barack Obama and Donald Trump each appeared at rallies in support of their party’s candidate.
Late into Tuesday night, a number of polling stations were ordered to stay open, due to technical delays, with some voters reporting they had voted right before midnight.
In Gwinnett county, in suburban Atlanta, Annistown elementary school reported power outages and delays, resulting in hours-long waits. County officials there eventually moved to keep the polling station open past 9pm.
Across other parts of Atlanta, lines wrapped around city blocks. At a church in Fulton county, more than two hundred people waited to vote in Midtown during their lunch breaks.
Abrams trailed all evening, leading to a muted atmosphere throughout much of her watch party on Tuesday evening. Earlier in the night, the Democratic Georgia congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis came out to address the crowd.
“Don’t give up. Don’t get lost in a sea of despair. Keep the faith. We can win and we must win. Be hopeful, be optimistic. There’s a lot of votes out there, they just need to be counted,” he said.
“I say over and over again, so many of you are so young, worked so hard. The vote is still the most powerful non-violent tool we have.”
Abrams’s campaign said that tens of thousands of absentee ballots were yet to be counted, along with an untold number of provisional ballots. Her campaign manager, Lauren Groh-Wargo, told the crowds in Atlanta she believed the numbers were there to push Kemp into a December runoff election.
“It’s going to still be a long night and we’re unlikely to have anything definitive to say until the morning,” she said. “We will fight for every vote.”
