Georgia's Republican Party once relied on votes in Atlanta's close-in suburbs, but today the GOP increasingly relies on the mountains of north Georgia for its votes.

Raphael Warnock's roots showed little promise of a future that led to the U.S. Senate. He grew up in Savannah in the Kayton Homes public housing project, the second youngest of 12 children. “Only in America is my story even possible,” Warnock told the cheering drive-in crowd Sunday. Warnock was arrested at the Georgia state Capitol in 2014 while protesting the refusal of state Republicans to expand Medicaid. Warnock recalled the Washington arrest during his speech Sunday in Savannah, as he looked ahead to his next trip to Capitol Hill.

Workers at the Gwinnett County Georgia elections headquarters process absentee ballots for Georgia's Senate runoff election in Lawrenceville, Ga. on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. The call was made after an analysis of outstanding ballots showed there was no way for Perdue, who was seeking a second term, to overtake Ossoff’s lead. Many of the ballots left to be counted were mail votes, a form of voting that overwhelmingly favored Ossoff. The remaining votes left to be counted in Republican-leaning areas that favored Perdue were not enough for him to catch up. Until Warnock, a Democrat hadn't won a U.S. Senate contest in the state since former Georgia Gov.