Just a note of caution for supporters of Mike McGinn, Joe Mallahan, OR Greg Nickels: Although the three leading mayoral contenders stacked up in that order, they’re really all within a few hundred votes of each other—meaning that this election could shake out just about any way, depending on what happens with the 60,000 or so votes still outstanding. As of 10:15 last night, frontrunner McGinn led second-place finisher Mallahan by 515 votes, and led incumbent Greg Nickels by just 970 votes. That’s a Gregoire 2004-size margin. At this point, anything could happen.
On the other hand: As I reported yesterday , most of the voters who’ve cast their ballots already are older, meaning they favor Mallahan and, to a lesser extent, Nickels. That means there are potentially a lot of younger voters who voted yesterday—and younger voters have been skewing heavily toward McGinn (and, to a lesser extent, Mallahan).
Although Nickels has spent a ton on a last-minute robocall and TV blitz, there’s little evidence that it did much good: Every poll so far has shown previously undecided voters going for either McGinn or Mallahan, not Nickels. That’s a fairly good reason to expect a Mallahan-McGinn showdown in November (as Josh predicted on Monday). In other too-close-to-call races: Seattle School Board director Mary Bass is currently just 35 votes ahead of her nearest challenger, clothing store owner Kay Smith-Blum.
