Today, Elrich added 5,514 (43.7%) votes while Blair gained 4,667 (37.0%)–a net gain of 847 votes for Elrich. Currently, Elrich has 35,300 votes to 35,004 votes for David Blair, so Elrich leads by 296 votes. Though enough to move Elrich into the lead, his spread over Blair in percentage terms is smaller than yesterday—a lead of 6.7% as opposed to yesterday’s 15.6%. But both leads are stronger than Blair’s on election night in either the early or Election Day vote.

Montgomery County is now reporting a total 16,730 mail ballot votes in the county executive race and the trend continues in incumbent County Executive Marc Elrich’s direction. The addition of 12,629 more mail ballot votes on top of the 4,101 reported last night has propelled Elrich into the lead.

Remember that if the Board of Elections is indeed counting ballots from earliest to latest received, this means that their composition could continue to vary. In other words, this is not a random sample of mail ballots. We’ll have to see if Blair improved among mail voters as the campaign progressed. UPDATE: At least one source is reporting that ballots are not being processed in order received. At the same time, mail ballots that have not been processed into the system can’t be scanned for votes yet and arrived later than ballots already processed.

But Blair’s advantage has, for now, been erased. The chance that Elrich once again snatches victory from Blair’s grasp is certainly looking better than both yesterday and on election night.