Maureen Coffey and Susan Cunningham are the apparent winners of the Democratic Party nomination for two open seats on the Arlington County Board, in what was Virginia’s first-ever publicly-run ranked choice voting election.

The initial tabulation of the results on Friday evening did not include 135 provisional ballots from voters who used same-day voter registration at the polls. A final tabulation of the results, including the same-day registration ballots, will happen on Saturday afternoon.

It took six rounds to arrive at the preliminary result, which is almost certain to hold in the final tabulation. Jonathan Dromgoole, Tony Weaver, and Julius “JD” Spain Sr. were eliminated in the first, second, and third rounds, at which point Maureen Coffey achieved the required 33% threshold. After Natalie Roy was eliminated, Susan Cunningham, who led in the initial tally of first-choice votes, also arrived at 33%.

Coffey is an early childhood policy expert at the Center for American Progress, and enjoyed support from three sitting members of the county board — Katie Cristol, Takis Karantonis, and Matt de Ferranti — as well as a number of labor and smart-growth groups. Assuming she’s elected in the fall, she’ll be the youngest member of the board and the body’s only renter. Most of Coffey’s first-choice votes came from denser areas of the county, along the Metro corridors.

Cunningham went into the race with endorsements from board member Libby Garvey, several past school board members, the Apartment and Office Building Association, and the Virginia chapter of the National Organization of Women. She currently serves as the interim executive director at Arlington Thrive, an anti-poverty nonprofit, and was previously an interim leader at AHC, Arlington’s largest affordable housing provider. Her first-choice votes largely came from wealthy single-family neighborhoods in North Arlington.

Both will face perennial county board candidate Audrey Clement, an independent, and Republican Juan Carlos Fierro in the general election this fall. They’ll enjoy the support of the powerful Arlington County Democratic Party in that election.

If Coffey and Cunningham are elected, the county board will be made up entirely of white leaders, an uncomfortable shift for a county fond of touting its commitment to diversity.

The six-way Democratic contest came at a pivotal time in county politics. The current county board is fresh off of a vote to end single-family zoning, a controversial step that drew strong criticism from older, established homeowners and praise from a coalition of younger voters, many of them renters.

The shift in zoning policy, sometimes referred to as “missing middle,” as well as the larger housing affordability challenges Arlington faces as a close-in D.C. suburb, quickly became a focal point in the board race.

“I think the community’s still very divided,” said Anne Bodine, with Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future, which opposed the board’s decision. “I think that’s a big part of it.”

“I think there’s a lot of issues with how the county wants to grow, and who gets to benefit from all the things the county has to offer,” said Jason Schwartz, one of the Arlington leaders with YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, which supported the “missing middle” policy and other attempts to expand the supply of homes in the county.

The preliminary results continue that division. Coffey was a supporter of “missing middle,” while Cunningham was a critic.

The county’s overall approach to growth and development — particularly in how it secures community benefits in approving new development projects and a long-term comprehensive plan for Langston Boulevard, an important arterial— also featured heavily in the race. So did the county’s worrying 22% office vacancy rate, which is likely to depress the county’s commercial tax revenue.

The results in the board race came several days after Election Day, a delay officials expected due to a Virginia rule requiring that the county wait until it has all provisional, dropbox, and late-arriving mail-in ballots collected before the ranked choice tabulation process can begin. (Ballots mailed on Election Day had until the following Friday at noon to reach the registrar’s office.) The process itself uses an open-source software that takes seconds to run the calculation of the different rounds, per Chris Hughes, the Director of Policy and Research at the RCV Resource Center, which was involved in the distribution of the software.

Arlington is the first locality in Virginia to use ranked choice voting, and the largest jurisdiction in the D.C. region to try it out.

So far, few obvious problems with the process have come to light. Voters reported few issues at the polls in filling out their ballots. In an informal online poll from local news site ARLnow, about three-quarters of respondents said they weren’t confused by the ranked choice part of their ballot. About 15% said they were confused by the tabulation process.

Chris DeRosa, an Arlington resident who worked on the local League of Women Voters’ ranked choice voting outreach effort in the lead-up to the election, said that the group had heard few voter concerns at polling places on Tuesday and at all three early voting sites the previous weekend. The group also talked with residents at farmers markets.

“One hundred percent [of voters] pretty much said it was easy to do,” she said.

DeRosa credited what she called an “outstanding push” from Arlington elections officials and ranked choice voting advocates to educate voters about the new voting method. Previously, the local NAACP raised concerns about the outreach process after the county backed away from a previously proposed $50,000 allocation to fund the effort. (Arlington elections officials said the state Department of Elections had stepped in, obviating the need for spending the local money.)

Candidates offered few criticisms of the process, beyond a good-natured joke or two about the long wait to know the outcome.

“Ever pour your heart and soul into something for six plus months and then have to wait 4-7 business days to know what happens? Bc same,” tweeted Maureen Coffey.

Those who did offer statements on Election Night or immediately following largely helped explain the preliminary nature of the first round of results to their supporters or otherwise tried to demystify the process. Coffey live-tweeted the in-person tabulation process on Friday evening.

“We want to respect the process by not commenting on preliminary numbers,” said Spain in a tweet. “Regardless of the outcome, I remain excited to help elect progressive Democrats!”

“While at first count I have the most first choice votes, there are still votes to be counted and recounted as we see how ranked choice plays out,” Cunningham wrote in an email to supporters. “It could be a week before we know the final results.”

DeRosa, with the League of Women Voters, said she believes the tone of the campaign was more positive and “cordial” because political attacks might alienate the supporters of other candidates.

“Several candidates seemed to understand that they were asking for first choice votes, but also telling the voters, ‘Please consider me as your second or third choice,’” she said.

The current county board will now face a choice about whether to institute ranked choice voting permanently, or to return to plurality voting. County residents are invited to share their feedback on the process in a survey.

Several other localities in Virginia, including in Loudoun County, were watching the outcome of ranked choice voting in Arlington with an eye to trying it out in the future, according to Liz White, the executive director of UpVote Virginia, which advocates for ranked choice voting.

“Their registrar and election officials want to see all these logistical questions answered,” she said. “They also want to see how Arlington voters feel about it, [and] see if it’s something their voters would want.”