Bainbridge Island attorney Charlie Wiggins has slipped ahead of incumbent Richard Sanders for Position 6 of the Washington State Supreme Court, and has continued to hold the lead since Tuesday.

As of Thursday at 2:00 p.m. Wiggins had 50.12 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 49.88 percent. The vote counts separating the two candidates is just 4,477 votes. As of Thursday at 2 p.m., the state still has 122,453 ballots left to be processed. Wiggins said he is optimistic, but not ready to declare victory with so many outstanding ballots.

About half of the uncounted ballots are from King County, 65,000, where Wiggins holds a commanding lead with 58 percent of the vote.

“One is never certain of these things, but it would be a really unusual and strange shift if all of a sudden ballots started to come back with a dramatically different vote count. I doubt that will happen,” said Wiggins.

Wiggins said he partially waiting to see what Justice Sanders does and how the ballot counts come in on Friday when several counties, including King report to the state.

Sanders had hoped to fare better as Snohomish and Spokane counties continue to report their counts, and hopes those numbers will off-set or partially off-set Wiggins success in King County.

“It’s very close and Charlie is doing really well in King County, the states most populous county, which is a concern for me,” he said.

If the gap between the candidates falls below 2,000 votes and less than one-half of 1 percent of the total votes, there will be an automatic machine recount. If the gap drops below 1,000 votes there will be a hand re-count.

If the difference between the two candidates is above 2,000 votes either of the candidates could request a re-count, but they would be require to bear those costs.

Neither candidate said they would pursue that option.