Republican Blaine Luetkemeyer’s lead has grown as returns continued to amass in Missouri’s high-spending 9th Congressional District race.

With votes counted in about a fifth of the district’s precincts, Luetkemeyer had 40,205 - or about 51 percent - and Democrat Judy Baker 36,555 - about 46.5 percent.  The remainder went to Libertarian nominee Tamara Millay.

But few votes had been reported yet from Baker’s presumably strongest area - her home base of Columbia and Boone County. Only absentees have been reported from Boone, and Baker had a 3,687-to-2,113-vote lead in those. Boone produced about 25 percent of the total vote in the last two Congressional elections in the district. - by far the single biggest share.

Luetkemeyer had sizeable early leads in two other large-population areas of the district - Franklin and St. Charles counties.