Republican Victor Marx inched further ahead of his chief rival in the Colorado gubernatorial primary, state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, as county clerks reported final, unofficial vote totals Thursday morning.

The winner of the June 30 primary — which has been too close to call since counting started nine days earlier — will face Democratic nominee Attorney General Phil Weiser, who defeated U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in their party’s primary by a nearly 14-point margin, in November.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis is term-limited.

As of 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Marx led with 206,518 votes to Kirkmeyer’s 204,556, for a difference of 1,962, or about 0.38% of the 518,577 votes tallied. State Rep. Scott Bottoms trailed with 107,503 votes.

Marx’s lead over Kirkmeyer was well outside the margin that would trigger an automatic recount.

Although Marx has maintained a roughly 2,000-vote lead over Kirkmeyer for more than a week, both candidates said they planned to wait to declare the race was over until potentially thousands of additional votes had been counted, including “cured” ballots and ballots cast by military and overseas voters.

“We are optimistic about where the race stands, but we are also respecting the process and not taking anything for granted until the counties complete their work,” Marx’s campaign manager, Buddy Jericho, told Colorado Politics on Monday.

“The race is not over,” Kirkmeyer said Tuesday in a statement. “There are still ballots left to count, including overseas ballots and ballots that can still be cured. Every legal vote deserves to be counted before the people of Colorado know the final outcome.”

The three-way primary pitted Marx, a first-time candidate and self-described “high-risk” missionary from Colorado Springs, against Kirkmeyer, who has held state and Weld County offices for nearly three decades, and Bottoms, an Assemblies of God pastor and state lawmaker from El Paso County serving his second term.

Colorado voters last elected a Republican governor in 2002, when Bill Owens won his second term, becoming the only Republican to hold the office in the last 50 years.

If Marx wins the nomination, his two primary opponents have each said they plan to withhold their endorsements, with Bottoms calling his fellow Christian ministry leader a liar and a “con man,” and Kirkmeyer calling Marx unfit for office.

“It could be the extinction of the Republican Party,” Kirkmeyer said last month at a debate sponsored by 9News and Colorado Politics, asserting that if Marx led the GOP ticket in the general election, it could drag down the party’s candidates up and down the ballot.

“He’s unfit. By his own words, he says he’s unfit,” she added. “He talks about homicidal and suicidal tendencies. It makes me worried to be in a room with him.”

At the June 2 debate — the only time Marx shared a debate stage with his two primary opponents — Marx responded to Bottoms, “You’re mean,” and told Kirkmeyer, “Kinda mean, too, Barb.” He added: “Just because somebody doesn’t believe the truth, it doesn’t make it a lie.”

In Colorado, voters have until eight days after the election to cure their ballots if they forgot to sign the ballot envelope, if the ballot signature doesn’t match signatures on file, or if they are first-time mail-in voters who forgot to include a copy of their ID.

The Marx and Kirkmeyer campaigns both said they were mobilizing volunteers to encourage voters whose ballots had been rejected to cure them. Similar efforts by Colorado candidates in recent years have swung the results in extremely close elections, though it’s been rare.

The deadline to cure ballots was 11:59 p.m. Wednesday night, according to state law. Military and overseas ballots postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day had to be received by the same deadline.

An automatic recount is triggered under Colorado law when the margin between the two top finishers is 0.5% or less of the leading candidate’s vote total. In the Republican gubernatorial race, the difference between Marx’s and Kirkmeyer’s totals would have to shrink to 1,033 or fewer votes to trigger a recount as of 10:30 a.m. Thursday.

Candidates or political organizations can request a recount no matter the margin, if they pay for it.

Editor’s note: This developing story will be updated.