ATLANTA — Spike Lee made an appearance at Sen. Raphael Warnock’s election night party here on Tuesday, touting his Georgia roots and highlighting the importance of the runoff election.

“I was born in Atlanta, Georgia… I feel home,” he told the crowd. “We will not be denied, because we’re on the right side of herstory and history.”

He also took a thinly veiled jab at former President Donald Trump, calling him “Agent Orange” — but declining to say his name.

ATLANTA — At Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s election night party, both the mood and music were upbeat as the results trickled in more than an hour and a half after polls closed.

“We’re gonna win this race tonight!” the emcee said in a musical tone, drawing cheers from the crowd.

Various speakers took turns at the mic to shower praise on Warnock and keep the crowd optimistic. His campaign staffers maintained confidence as they made their way around the Marriott Marquis room booked for the event.

The runoff race between Warnock and Walker is too close to call, according to NBC News.

As of 8:45 p.m. ET — with 62% of the vote counted — Walker led Warnock 50.8% to 49.2%, or by around 35,000 votes.

Read more results here.

Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling said in an interview on CNN that he believes nearly 3.3 million people cast votes in the Senate runoff, which he called a record.

Sterling, the chief operating officer in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office, said the votes are coming in at a quick pace and might slow down once 2.5 million votes are counted.

"What I do know is we have record turnout today, record turnout in the early voting, record usage of absentee ballots, so the people of Georgia were very excited to vote," he said, adding that no one was "discouraged from voting."

"We had more people vote early in the midterm runoff than voted in the entire midterm runoff four years ago," he said.

The turnout in the Senate runoff was nearly 75% to 80% of the entire turnout for the midterm election in November.

Duane Cochenour, a 61-year-old attorney, cast a vote in his midtown Atlanta precinct for Walker. But he said he’s “not crazy about” the Republican and was reluctant to support him.

“I’m not a Donald Trump fan at all. I really wish he would go away. That’s my biggest negative in voting for Walker — I didn’t want to be perceived as a vote in favor of a Trump candidate,” Cochenour said, reflecting the mood that helped turn Georgia blue two years ago. “But I felt like the importance of taking the Senate back outweighed that.”

Read more from voters here.

At least 1.33 million people voted in Georgia on Tuesday as of 6:00 p.m. ET, an hour before polls closed, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. That number approaches the nearly 1.5 million people who voted in the state on Election Day in November.

“That will push us very close to what we had for Election Day voting we had a month ago,“ Raffensperger said Tuesday night on CNN.

The more than 1.33 million in-person voters on Tuesday are in addition to an excess of 1.85 million votes that were cast ahead of Tuesday’s contest, breaking records.

Polls have closed in Georgia at 7 p.m. ET after opening at 7 a.m. The race is too early to call, according to NBC News projections.

The state allows anyone in line by 7 p.m. to still cast a ballot.

Tuesday marks the second election cycle in a row where the pivotal Georgia Senate race has ended with a runoff.

Runoffs occur in Georgia when no candidate wins a majority of the vote on the ballot — it’s happened 10 times since the 1992 election cycle, and Republicans have won seven out of those 10, according to election results posted by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

The two parties have largely split the runoffs over the last decade — Republicans won three (runoffs for the Public Service Commission in 2021 and 2018, as well as the 20218 secretary of state runoff) while Democrats won the two Senate runoffs in 2021.

Read more here.