Tony Thurmond has taken a near-4,000-vote lead in the Superintendent of Public Instruction election after six days of counting a portion of the estimated four million mail and provisional ballots in counties across the state. After ending Election Day more than 86,000 votes back, educators’ choice Tony Thurmond closed the gap on billionaires’ choice Marshall Tuck with nearly every update before taking the lead Sunday evening.

Punctuated with comments of “Let’s go, Tony 🙏🙏🙏,” screenshots from the Secretary of State’s website with the most recent count made the rounds on Facebook and Twitter over the holiday weekend. From 69,000 votes down on Friday afternoon to 51,000 behind that evening and a string of updates the following day that put Thurmond within 21,000 votes of the lead, the buzz grew as it became obvious that this election is not yet over.

It came to a head Saturday night when an update from Kern County gave a huge boost to Thurmond–an 80,000-vote swing–but was quickly discovered to be a reporting error. While the correction kept Tuck in front, Thurmond was only 30,000 votes back. That is, until this morning’s batch of votes from Santa Clara County brought the race closer than ever before, with a little more than 13,000 votes separating Thurmond and Tuck.

After a flurry of vote reports this evening from San Francisco, Alameda and San Diego counties, Thurmond now has a 3,889-vote lead.

Stay tuned here this week as we keep close tabs on the ongoing vote tally, including the expected arrival of a large number of votes from Los Angeles County by the end of tomorrow. Also, mail voters are encouraged to check the status of their ballots as soon as possible. Thousands of ballots weren’t signed and cannot be counted without a valid signature. Check here for links to every county’s registrar of voters to confirm your vote was counted.