Its almost certain to be Cary Moon vs. Jenny Durkan
Cary Moon remains in second place and is likely to face Jenny Durkan in the November general election. nate gowdy

It is all but certain Cary Moon and Jenny Durkan will face off in this fall's mayoral election.

In the latest ballot count, Moon, an urban planner, held onto second place with 1,362 more votes than lawyer and educator Nikkita Oliver. That's down from yesterday's 1,664, but, even with outstanding ballots, not likely narrow enough to push Oliver through to the general election.

There are very few ballots left to be counted, mostly consisting of votes with signature challenges. Oliver's campaign is currently "ballot chasing," helping supporters whose ballots haven't been counted because they didn't sign or the signature didn't match the one the county elections department has on file. However, there are just 1,721 outstanding signature challenges from within the city of Seattle and usually only about half of signature challenges are resolved, according to King County Elections. In total, the office expects count about 1,200 more city ballots.

Along with signature challenges, some alternative-format ballots and those mailed on August 1 but still arriving by mail have yet to be counted. As of yesterday, there were about 1,600 alternative-format ballots countywide, but most of those were included in today's ballot drop, according to King County Elections Chief of Staff Kendall Hodson. The elections office expects just 100 or 200 ballots will arrive by mail.

The 1,200 ballots the office expects to count are fewer than the gulf between Moon and Oliver. For Oliver to advance to the general election, more signatures would need to be resolved than usual and almost 100 percent of those ballots, plus other outstanding ballots, would have to go for Oliver.

As of today's count Moon has 17.63 percent of the vote, Oliver 16.89 percent, and the first-place candidate, former U.S. attorney Jenny Durkan has 27.96 percent. To trigger a machine recount, a race must be within 2,000 votes and .5 of a percentage point.

Moon said yesterday she was "grateful for all of the support for a different kind of leadership for Seattle. I will make another statement after every vote is counted.” Oliver's campaign could not immediately be reached for comment.

This post has been updated.