Ballot results released Friday afternoon showed her with 50.45 percent of the vote to Orion's 49.09.

Update, 3:35 p.m. 11/8/2019: Kshama Sawant is now leading her Seattle City Council race with Egan Orion.

After election night, Sawant was behind by about 8 points. The next night, about the same.

But in the vote count released Thursday afternoon, Sawant closed the gap in District 3 to about 2 percentage points.

That may be why Orion sounded discouraged with what seemed like such a big lead after the first count.

In recent elections, late-counted votes in Seattle's council races have tended to be more liberal, and Sawant had been expected to gain ground as more ballots came in.

(If you want to see a great graphical representation, check out the charts at Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.)

Meanwhile, in the City Council race for District 7, which includes downtown, there's a new leader.