Republican David Perdue holds off Democrat Michelle Nunn in Ga. Senate race

ATLANTA, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Republican David Perdue held off Michelle Nunn for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, winning outright a race many had predicted would be so close it would end in a runoff.

Nunn told supporters at 11 p.m. Tuesday that she had called Perdue to concede.

Perdue campaigned on the message, "If we want different results from Washington, we need to send a different kind of person to Washington." He asserted that his business background would give Georgians "a new option."

Nunn seized on Perdue's business credentials during the campaign, questioning Perdue's assertion that his career has focused on creating and saving jobs. She cited Perdue's time in Hong Kong as head of operations for Sara Lee, contrasting the jobs created in China with the closure of four plants and loss of 500 jobs in Georgia.

Perdue, in turn, tried to remind Georgia's mostly Republican voters that a vote for Nunn was also a ringing endorsement for the unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, and the White House.

"When you have a failed presidency, you have to prosecute it because we deserve better than we're getting right now," he said at an Oct. 26 debate.

Nunn is the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn.