Former City Councilmember Loren Taylor had a small early lead over Barbara Lee in the initial ranked-choice tally in Tuesday's special election for Oakland mayor, but this may not mean anything.

We all know how these ranked-choice tallies can go, and the next update isn't until Friday, but in the April 15 special election in Oakland, Taylor led former Congresswoman Barbara Lee 49% to 45% with other candidates getting less than 2% each in the first-round tally of early results. As Bay City News reports, these preliminary results were announced at 8:15 Tuesday night, based on 49,042 votes counted.

When the other eight candidates are are taken out of the tally and other ranked choices factored, Taylor's lead became smaller, with 51.2% versus Lee with 48.8%, as the Chronicle shows us. The spread between the two candidates after this first round of ranked-choice tabulation was just 1,118 votes.

Turnout after mail-in ballots are received and counted could prove higher than what was reported Tuesday night, which was just 19.6% of registered voters.

Taylor is no stranger to close tallies in ranked-choice votes. As Bay City News notes, he lost the 2022 mayoral election to Sheng Thao by just 700 votes after nine rounds of ranked-choice tabulating.

Taylor was cautiously celebrating his early lead at a party in downtown Oakland Tuesday night, as KTVU reports.

"We knew that Oaklanders were hungry for change, hungry for something new that would solve the problems and not just see those same problems reoccur time and time again," Taylor said at the event. "It's great to have the lead but we have been here before."

Lee told KTVU at her campaign's event, "If I am so fortunate as to be the mayor, we can pull this city together with people with different points of views living in different parts of the city to really find common ground to move this city forward."

Per Oaklandside, Lee told supporters, "This is gonna be a long week, but we are doing very well."

Lee, 78, was a popular 14-term Congresswoman, representing Oakland and parts of the East Bay since 1998 when she retired from the House of Representatives in January. After an unsuccessful run for Dianne Feinstein's former Senate seat, Lee tossed her hat in the ring for Oakland mayor in early January.

As Oaklandside reports, Lee spoke Tuesday night about her early days in politics, working on Bobby Seale’s 1972 run for Oakland mayor. And, she told the crowd, "I ran this campaign like I want to run this city as mayor. That’s about being inclusive, by going into our neighborhoods with our councilmembers, by making sure we have the input of every neighborhood… We’re going to do this differently.”

Taylor, 48, is a third-generation Oakland resident who was elected to the City Council in 2018 and served one term. He holds two masters degrees, one in biomedical engineering from the University of Connecticut, and one in business administration from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

The ballot measure to raise Oakland's sales tax by a half percent to help address the city's budget troubles, Measure A, looks to be passing with over 64% of the vote so far.

And the other election on the ballot, for Oakland's District 2 City Council seat that was vacated by Nikki Fortunato Bas in January, has EPA employee Charlene Wang winning so far with 50.6% of first-round votes, and 66.5% of votes after ranked-choice was tabulated.