The hotly-contested election for Selma’s mayoral post hinged not on the number of polling places won by a particular candidate, but by the margin of victory in each of Selma’s 17 precincts.

Selma’s voting precincts are made up of one absentee box and two polling places located in each of the city’s eight representative Wards.

In reviewing the unofficial vote totals from Tuesday’s municipal election, Selma Mayor George Evans did not win the majority of precincts, but those he did win, he did so in much larger fashion than his opponent, James Perkins, Jr., did in the precincts he won.

In the 10 boxes won by Perkins, his vote totals exceeded those of Evans by just over 100 votes on average. Compare that to the seven boxes won by Evans, where his votes outpaced those by Perkins by more than 226 votes per box.

In Ward 1 boxes, Evans won 85.79 percent of the vote, while in Ward 2 he won 64.94 percent of the vote. In Ward 3, Evans pulled 55.86 percent of the vote.

For Perkins, he claimed 57.25 percent of the vote in Ward 4 and 62.84 percent of the vote in Ward 5. In Ward 6, Perkins received 68.27 percent of the vote and in Ward 7 he pulled 64.15 percent. In Ward 8, Perkins received 63.23 percent of the vote.

After the 16 Ward boxes were tallied, Evans held a 172-vote lead, leaving the absentee box. It was there Evans pulled in the most sizeable victory, earning 719 votes to just 313 for Perkins; a more than 2-to-1 advantage.

The 1,032 votes cast in the absentee box, made up over 15 percent of the total number votes cast in the mayoral race.

The narrow margin in Tuesday’s election was far closer then the one seen in the 2008 election that also featured Evans and Perkins, along with two other candidates.

In that race, which featured Evans, Perkins, Louis Dixon and John Jowers, the margin of victory for Evans was 1,039.

As for other citywide elections, Corey Bowie and Tremayne Gorden are set to appear in a runoff election to decide the Selma City Council presidency race. Tuesday, Bowie pulled in the largest number of votes and earned the majority of votes in 11 of the 17 precincts. Gorden, who earned the second most votes, edging out Franklin Fortier Jr. to get into the runoff, earned the most votes in four boxes. Fortier earned the most votes in just two boxes.

The runoff election in this race, and the race for Selma City Council Ward 6, involving incumbent B.L. Tucker and Johnnie Leashore, will be Tuesday, Oct. 9

The other citywide election, the race for Selma City School Board president, saw incumbent Henry Hicks Sr., easily win re-election, winning by more than 2,000 votes. In the race, Hicks won 13 of the 17 boxes.