Kennedy Stewart will be the next mayor of Vancouver, after winning a nail-biter of a race.

It was well past midnight before the final results came in, after Stewart had been neck-and-neck with Non-Partisan Association candidate Ken Sim all evening.

Stewart, an independent candidate, finished with 28.72 per cent of the vote, barely ahead of the NPA’s Sim with 28.15 per cent of the vote, with all 133 voting places reporting. For much of the night, the two front-runners exchanged leads and remained within a percentage point or two of each other.

Polls closed at 8 p.m. Saturday, but anyone waiting in line at that time was allowed to vote. Some polling stations had long lines, which delayed the vote counting.

The top three were followed, at deadline, by Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young with 6.55 per cent, YES Vancouver’s Hector Bremner with 5.65 per cent, Vancouver 1st’s Fred Harding with 3.13 per cent and ProVancouver’s David Chen with 2 per cent.