[Editor's Note: This was originally posted yesterday morning. Given that Mallahan did, in fact, score a 51 to 48 win on yesterday afternoon's batch, we're moving it up.]
There are some surprising numbers in recent polling that could help Joe Mallahan.
Conventional wisdom holds that late voters=liberal voters. That standard scenario would be good news for Mike McGinn as the next few rounds of votes come in, including about 40,000 projected to be counted today. (Polls show that McGinn has stronger support among liberals than Mallahan, 51-36 in the last Survey USA poll.)
However: PubliCola has learned that some private polling done for Dow Constantine leading up the King County Executive’s race showed that Constantine (the strong liberal running against conservative opponent Susan Hutchison) was doing better among early voters. Of course, his margin is so big that he was still winning with with later voters, but not as strongly.
Similarly, the recent Survey USA poll had Constantine up 12 percent among those who had already voted (60 perecent of the sample), but only winning overall by 10 percent. That means the remaining 40 percent polled—those who hadn’t voted yet—were only going Constantine’s way by seven percent.
Personally, I think the dynamics in the Seattle mayor’s race are too subtle and tricky to give these stats much weight, and I’m sticking with my prediction on Monday morning that McGinn wins.
