largest counties. i want to take a closer look at them. fulton and gwinnett all in the atlanta area. and when we might start to see results tonight, that is key. right now homing in on cobb county, having some issues there with the tablet. in cobb county, they expect the first vote report around 8:15 p.m. those will likely be early in-person votes. then they expect to update their vote totals around every 45 minutes from there. then you want to go over to dekalb. they will first report early in-person votes followed by mail ballots and then election day votes. heading over to fulton county, first vote is expected between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. but they could come in earlier. so we re waiting to see that. we ll see early in-person votes first and then election day votes. in gwinnett, another large county there in the atlanta area. the first vote report will
more election day vote. i would say history tells you it won t hold up that strong. i just pulled out to show it again. because now you re looking at 261,000 vote early lead. that s impressive. but as we watched the seesaw a month ago, they seesawed throughout the night. if you re the democrat you know your foundation is build a big lead with the early vote. that s what s happening. the question is what comes next. is it enough of one? go to cobb county because our own nick valencia is in marietta, georgia, in cobb county. and he s with a county election official. we can ask him some questions. nick, tell us what s going on there in cobb county. we re at the cobb county center of elections where those votes are starting to be tabulated already. and we want to bring in here the chairwoman of the cobb county board of elections. thank you so much for taking the time with cnn. we know you re extremely busy. you re actually working tonight. i know that you can t give us numbers from tod
of this giant report of early vote from cobb county. so it s a democratic county, and the early vote is disproportionately democratic. so this is what you need to do if you re the warnock campaign. but you also know there are a lot of votes that still need to be counted. let s do the loop around atlanta. fulton county is also atlanta. this is the base, the largest county in the state. it s the base of the democratic party. that s where senator warnock needs to be, as close as 80% as he can be if a democrat is going to win. this is essentially the philadelphia of pennsylvania. this is where the democrats need to run it up to be competitive in a close race. and at the moment in the early vote, that s happening. so then you come over here to gwinnett, the second largest county in the state, just shy of 9% of the state population. this is 68%, 69% if you want to round up. we go back a month ago, it was 59%. so he s overperforming where he was a month ago right now. but this, again, is earl
said they will have seen a candidate able to fundraise the way rafael warnock can in forever. if you re waiting for drunk driver to hand over some money, you might be waiting a long time. he s not one known to hand over cash. especially not in a situation like this where he s not being embraced with open arms. but for a moment on rafael warnock. it s not just warnock. he is perhaps the ideal democratic candidate for this state. he is pastoring martin luther king s church. he is an authentic figure for the state. he has the support of the party and has been a unifying figure for the party. but there has been years and years of democratic work on the ground in georgia that could be paying off. just the fact that there s a runoff. that s a really, really important point. jake? thank you. let s go now to the battleground desk with some information about what we re seeing out of cobb county. yeah. as you and john were talking about cobb county earlier, some
276,000, almost 277,000 votes ahead of herschel walker. and, again, as we ve said john king here at the magic wall, we expected that he would be in the lead. he was a month ago. and the question is, is he going to be able to maintain a lead certainly not this lead as votes from today come in? right. and that is the challenge. again, the republicans are reasonably confident enough voters turned out today to give herschel walker the chance to catch up. the question is did they vote for walker by the right proportions. they need somewhere in the ballpark of 60% of the vote. but you re looking at this big number right now. 277,000 vote lead. you think, wow. i just say yes that s wow. and it s what senator warnock needs to do but it s also a wait. why is it so big? because it s starting to fill in around atlanta. cobb county just had a large report of votes, 186,000 and change to 47,000. this is why that lead just stretched the way it did because