Voters watching the Tulsa mayoral primary election results come in Tuesday night saw Monroe Nichols build and maintain a slim lead over Karen Keith and Brent Van Norman all night. But Nichols had the opposite experience.

Staffers were “poll-running,” bringing in precinct-by-precinct results, and his campaign was tallying the votes quicker than the state election board was posting them online. But Nichols’ campaign started by counting votes from traditionally conservative south Tulsa zip codes first.

“When I was looking at the real live results coming in, I was about 800 votes behind,” Nichols told The Frontier. “So I felt the other way, where I came from behind was able to actually pull ahead.”

Nichols ended up tallying the most votes — 18,729 to Keith’s 18,456 and Van Norman’s 18,019 votes.He will now face Keith in a runoff Nov. 5. The primary was expected to be close, but it was still something of a surprise that Nichols, a younger, more progressive Democrat, finished ahead of his opponents. Keith, a more moderate Democrat, has not only spent decades on both television as a reporter and as a County Commissioner, but also outraised Nichols ahead of the primary election. And while Van Norman has only lived in Tulsa for three years, he was the most popular Republican in a city where the last four mayoral elections have favored conservatives.

But now the race changes.While Nichols received the most votes Tuesday night, he knows it will be a challenge to win in November.

“I don’t have to win every person who’s going to vote in November,” he said. “I just have to win the majority of the people who are going to vote in November. And I think there’s a majority of the electorate who are really interested in a mayor who’s going to be a problem solver.”

Keith told The Frontier she believes her ability “to reach across the aisle” will be the deciding factor in November. She has spent more than a decade as a County Commissioner, a traditionally conservative post she said she’s held for that long by not thinking in terms of red or blue.

“Yes, I’m a registered Democrat,” she said. “But many of the issues facing Tulsa, they’re simply not red or blue issues.”

But she knows she has to appeal to more conservative voters to become Mayor. With two Democrats vying against each other, Keith feels she can win some Van Norman voters over to her side.

“I’m really proud that I’ve won four elections as a Democratic candidate for County Commissioner,” Keith said. “And the only way I could win that was literally to have the support of both parties. And that’s going to be my strategy as we attack this general election.”