Votes counted by King County Elections over the weekend and today continued to narrow the lead of incumbent State Sen. Mark Mullet, a Democrat, against a strong challenge from Republican Chad Magendanz, but there are too few remaining votes outstanding for the latter to overcome a deficit and unseat the former, according to a Sammamish Comment analysis.

Mullet holds the 5th Legislative District seat. The 5th encompasses the greater Klahanie area of Sammamish.

Mullet ended election night with 53.33% of the vote to Madendanz’s 46.58% (the rest are write-ins) and a 2,974 lead. During the daily count and reporting, this lead narrowed until over the weekend, it was just 50.67% and 947 votes. This represented a change of 2.66% in the vote margin, will outside the historical 1%-2% from election night to certification.

At the end of today, Mullet’s lead was just 907 votes.

The election will be certified this year on Nov. 29. Even though there are about two weeks left to certification, the incoming ballots and vote counting has slowed considerably.

Magendanz only picked up 40 votes from the weekend through today on 276 additional votes counted in the 5th LD race. During the weekend, 4,758 votes were counted in the 5th LD Senate race.

The pace of Magendanz’s pick-up has narrowed and so has the vote count. Unless there is a big ballot dump–an unlikely prospect–Magendanz is done.

Sammamish Comment reaffirms its election night projection that Mullet will be the winner.