McGinn's lead widens; will he be Seattle's next mayor?

Mike McGinn appears headed toward becoming Seattle's next mayor tonight after the latest vote count showed him pulling ahead to about a 2,400-vote advantage over Joe Mallahan.

But more tellingly, McGinn has been pulling away in the late votes counted since election night. He led by about 900 votes on Tuesday. He has only widened the lead recently.

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The race is still close. McGinn has 85,416 votes or 50.31 percent. Mallahan has 83,032 votes or 48.91 percent.

McGinn earlier had said he didn't plan on commenting Friday night. There was no immediate comment from Mallahan's campaign.

King County Elections released two batches of results today.

McGinn said after the earlier results today, "it's a good, positive trend. We were hopeful (the later votes) would follow the primary trend in which later voters seemed to be voting for us. We're hopeful that's happening."

According to polls done for KING5 by Survey USA, McGinn seemed to be gaining momentum in the weeks leading up to the election. The last poll showed the race neck-to-neck. Mallahan had a wider lead in previous polls.

McGinn has refused to speculate on why that trend emerged. A possibility may be his clarification of his stance on the tunnel, in which he said that while he opposes the project, he would respect the positon of the City Council and state legislature. That may have eased the concerns of voters who may have seen him as an obstructionist.

Mallahan has also laid claim to winning the support of late deciding voters. After Thursday's count, Mallahan's campaign noted that he'd inched closer to McGinn -- gaining 462 votes since election night. If that trend continued, campaign spokesman Charla Neuman said city might be headed toward a recount. The Secretary of State's office blog says a recount is mandatory if the vote margin is less than one-half of one percent and also less than 2,000 votes.

However, what gains Mallahan had made since election night evaporated with Friday's first count.

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