The Oklahoma governor primary runoff results are arriving county by county, and the early picture shows a contest between Mike Mazzei and Gentner Drummond that looks quite different depending on which part of the state you examine.

With most counties still reporting, the pattern so far is uneven rather than uniform, which is typical for a runoff where turnout is lower and regional loyalties carry more weight than they would in a general election.

What the Early Counties Show

Four counties had reached roughly 95 percent reporting in the initial batch of returns, and they did not tell a single story.

Adair County delivered the most lopsided margin of the group. Mazzei took 1,551 votes to Drummond’s 720, giving him 68.3 percent to 31.7 percent. That is better than a two-to-one advantage in a county where turnout is modest but the signal is clear.

Alfalfa County went the other direction. Drummond claimed 581 votes against 355 for Mazzei, converting to 62.1 percent versus 37.9 percent. Roughly a mirror image of Adair, though with fewer total ballots cast.

Atoka County returned to Mazzei, who won 952 votes to Drummond’s 658. The split there came to 59.1 percent against 40.9 percent, a solid but less commanding margin than in Adair.

Beaver County produced the closest result by a wide stretch. Mazzei edged Drummond by seven votes, 333 to 326, translating to 50.5 percent against 49.5 percent. In a county this small, seven votes is a handful of households.

Reading the Pattern

A few observations are worth drawing from these numbers, with the obvious caveat that four counties do not make a statewide trend.

Mazzei is leading in three of the four, and doing so with room to spare in two of them. Drummond’s single win in Alfalfa was decisive but came from one of the smallest vote pools on the board.

The raw totals matter as much as the percentages. Adair produced 2,271 combined votes while Beaver produced 659. A 68 percent share in a county with three times the turnout carries considerably more weight toward a statewide total than a similar share somewhere smaller.

Runoff turnout is low across the board. These are the numbers of a low-attention election held after the main primary, which tends to reward candidates with committed, organized supporters rather than broad name recognition.

Understanding the Expected Vote Figure

Alongside the county returns, election reporting includes an estimate of the expected vote, which is worth understanding because it shapes how percentages should be read.

The expected vote represents the projected total number of ballots that will ultimately be counted in a given race. It is an estimate rather than a fixed number.

That estimate is assembled from several inputs, including data on how many votes were cast early and information relayed to vote reporters on election day by county election officials.

Crucially, the figure is not static. As new information arrives, NBC News adjusts it, which means a county listed at 95 percent reporting can shift if the underlying estimate of total turnout changes.

Why the Percentage Reported Number Can Mislead

This is where readers often get tripped up. A county showing 95 percent in does not necessarily mean 95 percent of ballots have been physically counted.

It means 95 percent of the estimated eventual total has been counted. If that estimate proves low, additional votes can appear even after a county seems nearly complete. If the estimate proves high, a county can finish sooner than the percentage suggests.

For a race like Beaver County, decided by seven votes, that distinction is not academic. A small batch of remaining ballots could flip the result outright.

What Comes Next

The remaining counties will determine the outcome, and Oklahoma’s population is heavily concentrated in a handful of metropolitan areas that have not yet reported in this early snapshot.

Rural county margins, however dramatic, deliver limited numbers of votes. The statewide result will hinge on how the two candidates perform where the population actually sits.

Until those returns arrive, the honest summary is that Mazzei has the better of the early map, Drummond has demonstrated he can win decisively in the right places, and the sample remains far too small to call anything.