UPDATE, 5 p.m.: Floyd County’s numbers are now in, and as expected, Madon held on to win the race with 35 percent of the vote. He was followed by Willie Crase, with 15 percent of the vote, and James Tyler Ward, Tanner Hesterberg and Justin Wade Noble, each with 10 percent.

ORIGINAL STORY: PINEVILLE, Ky. — With one county in the district still counting votes, Mountain Top News is projecting that Pineville Mayor Scott Madon will be the next state senator for the 29th District.

This year’s race in the 29th District went into uncharted territory when Republican incumbent Sen. Johnnie L. Turner died last month, one week after his only challenger, independent David Suhr, withdrew from the race due to a military commitment. That resulted in a last-minute scramble by 11 new candidates, who filed to run write-in campaigns in the closing days of the race.

The district is composed of Bell, Floyd, Harlan, Knott and Letcher counties, and results for all counties except Floyd are now in. Those partial results show Madon leading in a runaway with 44 percent of the vote, compared to 14 percent for his next closest rival, James Tyler Ward, of Whitesburg.

With 5,603 write-in votes still being counted in Floyd County, Ward would need to amass 78 percent of the vote in the 11-candidate field. That’s a number none of the candidates have been able to achieve, except for Madon, who got 79 percent in his home county of Bell.

In a campaign ad, Madon has described himself “pro-life, pro-2A, pro-coal Trump Republican.” Prior to the race, he was endorsed by the late Sen. Turner’s family and the Senate Republican Caucus.