FAIRBANKS — Tammie Wilson’s campaign manager said the assemblywoman is probably too far behind Luke Hopkins to win the borough mayor’s race.

Still, she won’t be conceding until all of the votes are counted on Tuesday, Rick VanderKolk said.

“Let the voters have their say,” he said. “Statistically, it’s unlikely that she’ll pull it off.”

Hopkins has a 617-vote lead with an estimated 2,700 absentee, questioned and early votes yet to be counted, according to the borough clerk. The two assembly members went to a runoff election after neither grabbed at least 40 percent of the vote in the six-person mayoral race on Oct. 6.

A precinct breakdown of the runoff election shows Hopkins, a five-year veteran on the assembly, had more votes than Wilson in all of the Fairbanks city precincts, Ester, the University area, the Goldstream Valley, Farmers Loop, the Steese Highway and Steele Creek.

Wilson had higher totals than Hopkins at the precincts nearest the Fairbanks International Airport as well as in North Pole, the Badger Road area, Chena Lakes, Fox, Two Rivers, Moose Creek, Salcha and the military installations.

“You have the traditional political affiliations with the east (more conservative) and the west (less conservative),” said Garry Hutchison, a former assemblyman and one of the four mayoral hopefuls who was eliminated on Oct. 6.

“I think it’s significant that Luke Hopkins took the town,” Hutchison said on Wednesday. “What I think carried the day yesterday was the crossover. There was a Republican crossover. I think that Tammie didn’t appeal to the business community.”

Hopkins, a registered Democrat with a long history in Fairbanks, attracted the support of several prominent business-minded Republicans. Wilson, a registered Republican and a regular on local talk radio, drew much of her support from a passionate conservative base.

Fairbanks North Star Borough elections are non-partisan.

While Hopkins prevailed in the 10 Fairbanks city precincts, four precincts were close. Two are within one or two votes.

VanderKolk predicts Wilson will gain a couple of city precincts after the outstanding ballots are counted.

“The gap will shrink between the two candidates but not enough,” he said.

Wilson and supporters have said a string of late-September newspaper articles may have cost her votes. One focused on a neighbor’s criticism of stored junk on Wilson’s property east of Fairbanks, criticism that followed word from a reporter to the neighbor that a previous complaint against the property had legally expired.

“If somebody would have checked first, that wouldn’t even have been an article,” Wilson said, adding that she was frustrated by what she sensed was media bias during the final week of the race.

VanderKolk agreed with Wilson’s assertion. He also pointed to a news story about the Interior Alaska Conservative Coalition being under investigation by the state for allegedly spending money to help Wilson. The group reportedly failed to register with the Alaska Public Offices Commission.

The organization’s executive director is a deputy treasurer for Wilson’s campaign.

VanderKolk said the news reports may have cost Wilson some votes.

Both campaigns said they urged supporters to vote early, and many of the uncounted ballots are from people who did vote early.

“All of our calls the last two weeks for the campaign were reminding people to do early voting,” said Grier Hopkins, who managed his father’s campaign. “All of the e-mails we sent out were reminding people. Anyone who came to the campaign office, we told them to go and vote early also.”