Democrats have consolidated their control of the US Senate by winning a bitterly contested seat in Georgia, according to estimates.
Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a race that was undecided after last month’s midterm elections.
President Joe Biden’s party now holds the upper house of Congress 51-49.
The result marks a disappointing run of midterm election results for Republicans.
The party defied expectations by winning only a slim majority in the US House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress, last month.
Mr Walker, an American football legend and political newcomer, joins a string of defeated candidates backed by former President Donald Trump, who is currently seeking re-election to the Republican White House in 2024.
The Georgia contest had to be decided by a runoff vote because no candidate received 50 percent of the vote in November, although Mr. Warnock led Mr. Walker by 37,000 votes.
Mr Warnock – who became the first black senator in the Deep South state when he won his seat for the first time in January 2021 – told his victory party in an Atlanta hotel ballroom: “It is an honor for me to The four most powerful words ever spoken were said.Democracy: The people have spoken!
The 53-year-old Southern Baptist preacher, whose Atlanta church was once led by civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., gave special thanks to his mother.
She said she grew up “picking somebody else’s cotton” in Georgia in the 1950s. Tonight, he said, he “helped get his youngest son elected United States senator”.
Mr. Walker clearly didn’t acknowledge it when he took the stage to address supporters at the College Football Hall of Fame in central Atlanta.
But he said: “There are no excuses in life, and I won’t make any more because we fought the same fight.”
Mr Walker’s campaign was hit by claims – which he denies – that he had paid for two ex-girlfriends to have abortions despite calls for the procedure to be outlawed.
The 60-year-old also had to admit during the campaign that she had fathered three children she had not mentioned publicly, after long protesting absent fathers.
Republicans, meanwhile, ran an attack ad reminding voters of allegations by Mr Warnock’s ex-wife that she ran over his feet in a car during a March 2020 domestic dispute.
