UPDATE: Despite the razor-thin margin, the mood at the Approve Ref. 71 party at Pravda on Capitol Hill was celebratory. Anne Levinson, chair of the campaign, had trouble being heard over a cheering crowd.

"At this point, we do have a count statewide. We're at 51 to 49," said Levinson. "There's a lot of ballot counting left to be done."

As the crowd quieted, she said, "I want to thank those who stood shoulder to shoulder with us to push back this kind of hatred. We stood up and we stood up strong."

At the Reject Ref. 71 party in Everett, campaign manager Larry Stickney said, "I don’t know what to make of it yet."

“We’re still in the hunt,” he said. “We’re far from conceding.”

Regardless of how the vote goes “it’s important what’s been accomplished here,” Stickney said, talking about the case the U.S. Supreme Court may take up on whether to release the signatures of R-71 petition signers.

In addition, “we’ve got a re-engaged community,” he said, talking about the conservative Christian political community. “We’ve had a deflated movement” previously, he said.

He said it’s too early to say what their next steps are.

Ref. 71 was passing in 10 of Washington's 39 counties, all of them in the Puget Sound area. It was passing 2-to-1 in King County.

At the Approve Ref. 71 campaign on Capitol Hill, Marie Rose, 55, and her partner, Laura, 45, smiled as they sat on a white cube couch with their arms around each other after the early returns. The couple, together for 10 years, were married last February in Canada. "I just walked through the room and I almost cried,'' Marie Rose said. "Everyone worked really hard. Everyone is just waiting for every percentage."

Several weeks ago, she attended a Protect Marriage rally in Lynnwood that left her shaken.

"I felt like a Jew in 1932 Germany,'' she said. She began to feel optimist, she said, when a passerby looked on disapprovingly at the rallygoers and remarked, "I never thought i'd ever see something like that in Lynnwood."


UPDATE: In an apparent victory for gay rights supporters, voters seemed to be approving Referendum 71, which expands the state's domestic partnership law.

The results, if they hold, would be a disappointment to religious conservatives, who had mounted an aggressive campaign against conferring additional benefits on committed gay couples and some senior couples.

Ref. 71 passed overwhelmingly in King County and was being voted up throughout the Puget Sound region. Voters in Eastern Washington, meanwhile, were rejecting the measure by wide margins — including in Spokane County.

In King County, yes votes were running 66 percent.

Early results statewide for Referendum 71 showed about 51 percent voting to approve the referendum, and nearly 49 percent voted to reject.

UPDATE: Pierce County numbers finally came in. The county, which is not vote-by-mail, was a bit slow to post, compared with the mail-in counties. But as of 9:09 p.m., R-71 was losing in Pierce County. Some 52 percent were voting to reject, and 48 percent were voting to approve.

Pierce County could be key to the measure's fate. The next batch of Pierce County results were expected around 10:30 p.m.

If you assume the roughly 50 percent statewide turnout predicted by the Secretary of State's office, there appear to be far more votes left to count in the counties that are approving Referendum 71 than in the counties that are opposing it.