Jacob Naven doesn’t want to mention the “V” word until he sees at least the next update in the ongoing count of ballots cast in the Manteca’s mayoral race.

Naven was leading incumbent Gary Singh by 696 ballots as of Friday’s updated count giving him a 51.09 percent to 48.41 percent lead.

With an estimated 2,000 ballots cast in Manteca still to be verified and counted, both candidates indicated roughly 70 percent would need to be in Singh’s favor for Naven to lose.

Even though the chances are not high that Naven could end up losing, he is not willing to declare victory until more votes are counted.

“It’s trending in my favor,” Naven said Friday of his numeric 11,305 to 10,609 lead over Singh so far.

The votes separated the two is now 180 less given Naven led by 876 votes on Wednesday and now leads by 696 votes.

“I trust the system,” Naven said of the counting process.

In 2018, Jose Nuno pulled off a stunner and passed Mike Morowit in the final count after repeatedly trailing in the previous updates on the tabulation process.

But the numbers separating the two were closer and there were a large amount of provisional ballots than this year.

Provisional ballots refers to ballots that are cast when questions arise about a voter's qualification to vote.

Those ballots set aside and not typically counted until the end and only if the voters checks out to be eligible to vote.

Countywide, based on the San Joaquin Registrar of Voters unprocessed ballot report issued on Thursday, there were 88 provisional ballots and 3,568 conditional voter registration provisional ballots cast.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com