Georgia turned its twin U.S. Senate runoffs on Tuesday into political nail-biters, capping this charged election season with suspense.

Predictions of very tight races proved accurate: 3 1/2 hours after polls closed, with more than 85% of the votes counted, incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue (whose term ended Sunday) and Kelly Loeffler gained tiny leads over Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, but both races were near 50-50.

One thing was clear: the overall voter turnout was big, possibly even record-setting, as Georgia voters responded to the idea that they could decide which party will control the U.S. Senate by casting more than 3 million ballots before election day.

That’s more than 60% of the nearly 5 million votes cast in the November presidential election, when President-elect Joe Biden carried Georgia by a mere two-tenths of one percent.

In contrast, election officials in what Politico calls the “most tightly divided state in the nation” reported relatively light in-person voting for most of the day.

Both President Trump and President-elect Biden made get-out-the-vote appearances in Georgia on Monday.

But at a midday briefing, Gabriel Sterling, a staffer in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, told reporters that voting had been “slow and steady,” with few lines taking more than a few minutes, and none longer than half an hour, CNN said. Sterling added that there had been few voting issues and those that occurred “were addressed quickly.”

Election Day turnout seems light so far in the Atlanta area with few lines reported and where many early votes already cast. Much more interested in what is happening in NW Georgia where early turnout has been lagging https://t.co/6gyPeNakbQ

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) January 5, 2021

“The final days of the tense contests, which set records for campaign spending and early turnout in Georgia, were dominated by Trump’s continued efforts to subvert the presidential election results,” said the Reuters news agency.

“Voting rights groups credited the large number of voters who opted to vote absentee or at an early voting location” for the low turnout, which most experts say will likely favor Ossoff and Warnock, reports the Associated Press.

If both Democrats win, they’ll create a 50-50 partisan split in the Senate, giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.

History, however, is not on their side: no Democrat has won a Senate race in Georgia in 24 years.