Early votes are in and Sarah Bunch is ahead of Tracy Hoskins by 195 votes in the Ward 3 City Council runoff election.
According to unofficial early and absentee totals, Bunch received 336 votes (70 percent) and Hoskins received 141 votes (30 percent).
A total of 477 people voted early or through absentee ballots in the Fayetteville runoff this year, compared to 691 early/absentee voters in 2014 when Alderwoman Adella Gray defeated Paul Phaneuf for the Ward 1, Position 1 seat.
The runoff comes three weeks after the Nov. 8 general election when Bunch took 4,183 votes (48%), followed by Hoskins’s 3,119 votes (36%), and Benjamin Harrison’s 1,350 votes (16 percent).
In Arkansas, a candidate must win a 50 percent majority of the votes or receive more than 40 percent and be ahead of the runner-up by 20 percent to avoid a runoff.
Jennifer Price, the county’s election coordinator, said the final results are expected to be counted and released soon.
In other Washington County early voting news, Colby Fulfer leads Eric Ford 51 percent to 49 percent in the Springdale Ward 1 City Council runoff; Jeff Watson leads Kathryn Birkhead 58 percent to 42 percent in the Springdale Ward 3 runoff; and Heith Caudle leads Mike Nelson 65 percent to 35 percent in the West Fork mayoral runoff.
