UPDATE: At the Mallahan party at The Edgewater, the candidate continued to wear a smile and work the crowd in a small low-ceilinged ballroom tonight more than an hour after election-night results showed him trailing Mike McGinn.

Asked why he was behind despite a big fundraising advantage and prominent endorsements, Mallahan admitted he found it "stunning" that McGinn was leading.

"I don't want to sound like a victim, but the only thing I can surmise is all the negative messages about Joe Mallahan somehow resonated with people," Mallahan said.

UPDATE.: Speaking to a jubilant crowd of volunteers hugging, high-fiving and chanting "We like Mike," McGinn said the next few days would be tense as more votes are counted.

"We really defied the conventional wisdom," McGinn said. "The conventional wisdom was that the candidate with the most money, the candidate that has the longest list of endorsements, can win it."

"We constantly talked about the type of future we wanted for Seattle, and I think what it says is that Seattle and voters can look past the soundbites and rhetoric and can see past the amount of money thrown at them and just really evaluate the candidates."

At The Edgewater, Joe Mallahan was subdued but optimistic. He said he expected early votes to slightly favor McGinn — a trend that appeared during the primary — but sounded surprised he was behind.

"Seattle voters clearly like a close race and a recount," Mallahan said. "I'm still very optimistic."

Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark hugged McGinn at his party and said, "You should be very careful or you could actually end up being mayor."

After McGinn spoke to his supporters, an unusual campaign tactic emerged. His campaign handed out pre-paid cellphones and lists of undecided voters to at least 20 volunteers, with instructions to call the voters to see if they had not yet voted.

If the voters had not yet cast ballots, they were asked to drop their ballots off at five QFC stores around Seattle where McGinn volunteers would be stationed. The McGinn volunteers would then take the ballots to a Sea-Tac post office that stays open until 11:45 p.m. — allowing the ballots to still be postmarked today.

"We had a plan," said volunteer Nate Cormier, standing outside the West Seattle Junction QFC, holding a blue McGinn sign and ballots from three voters.

"If it was close, we've got to mobilize."

UPDATE: Joe Mallahan just arrived at his party at The Edgewater Hotel on Seattle's waterfront.

The Seattle's mayoral race is too close to call, with environmentalist attorney Mike McGinn leading T-Mobile executive Mallahan in the first count of ballots released by King County tonight.

With 85,000 ballots counted, McGinn is currently up by 910 votes.

As McGinn came out to talk at his party at The War Room, supporters burst into huge cheers, hugged and high-fived chanted of "We like Mike."

If the results hold it would be an upset for McGinn, who was outspent by more than 3-to-1, opposed by the city’s biggest business and labor groups, and seemed to back down on his biggest campaign issue — opposition to the deep-bore tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct — two weeks ago.

King County Elections officials predict a 56 percent turnout. In Seattle, a total of 210,000 votes are expected.