Fewer than 120 votes separated Republican incumbent Jack Murphy from challenger Steve Voshall in the District 27 state Senate primary race.

“I was surprised by how close it was,” Murphy said. “I’m just glad I won. I feel very fortunate that people have chosen me to send me back to the senate for another term.”

Murphy received 13,282 votes, or about 50.2 percent. Voshall’s 49.8 percent total equaled about 13,165 votes, with 117 votes separating the two.

Voshall, a small business owner and founder and past chairman of the Forsyth County Tea Party, said he too was surprised, but pleased with the closeness of the race.

“I’m quite proud of myself and my supporters and volunteers,” Voshall said. “I think we ran a great race, an honest race and we got the facts out and we kept it to the facts.”

The district represents all but the extreme northeastern tip of Forsyth County, which is in Senate District 51, where incumbent Steve Gooch of Dahlonega ran unopposed.

Because Murphy won by less than 1 percent, a recount can be requested, Luth said. Voshall said he likely would ask for one.

“It’s less than a half percent,” he said. “With 117 people out of 27,000 votes, there’s definitely room there for some human errors and we need to make sure that the vote is correct.”

In the meantime, Voshall said he was pleased with how he performed as a “career business person and a concerned citizen running against an incumbent machine that has all of the good-old-boy support.”

Murphy was first elected to serve as District 27 state senator in 2006. Prior to that, he spent four years as a state representative.

He serves as chairman of the Banking and Financial Institutions and as a member of the Ethics, Transportation, Public Safety, and Insurance and Labor committees.

While Murphy said he would have preferred to win by a larger margin, “the facts are that a win is a win and I’m glad that I won.”

“I had a lot of folks supporting me. I had a lot of people working for me out there and a lot of people praying for me and that worked,” he said.

“Just like I’ve been saying in the debates, I have an agenda and my agenda is to try to bring jobs to Georgia and I’m going to try to continue that.”