With a few ballots remaining to be logged in, early voting in Tuesday's elections has nearly doubled the amount seen in the 2009 elections that also included a school board runoff, Wake County election officials said today.

In the hotly contested District 3 race, one-stop and mail voting totaled 1,225, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans 635 to 317. Three Libertarians and 270 unaffiliated voters took part in early voting.

The early voting total for the District 3 runoff exceeds the number of similar ballots cast in the Oct. 11 general election when voters also had Raleigh municipal races to decide on. Back in October, 1,157 absentee and one-stop ballots were cast with Hill getting 60.6 percent of the total back when it was a four-person race.

The overall early voting count so far is 2,058, as opposed to 1,131 in 2009. In that election, District 2 candidate John Tedesco won his spot on the board and now serves as board vice chairman.

In District 3, incumbent Kevin Hill and challenger Heather Losurdo are battling it out for the seat that will determine whether the board will have a Democratic or Republican majority. Although the board is officially nonpartisan, Democrats have mostly supported Hill, while Republicans have backed Losurdo.

Board of elections director Cherie Poucher said Tuesday's election is roughly equivalent to the November 2009 polling, in which a school board runoff and municipal races were on the ballot.

"Ballots can returned up until 5 o'clock today," Poucher said this morning.

tgoldsmith@newsobserver.com Goldsmith: 919-829-8929