By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Bruce Harrell gained a point on his challenger Katie Wilson yesterday, as King County Elections tallied a batch of about 21,000 ballots that were sent in the mail by Election Day. Those ballots left a gap of just over 11,000 votes between the two candidates, with Harrell leading Wilson 53.8 percent to 45.7 percent.
That’s a big gap, but the math to close it is relatively clear. With total turnout in Seattle around 55 percent, according to data from the Secretary of State’s office, there could be as many as 140,000 votes still uncounted. (This number can still fluctuate, since King County hasn’t finished counting every ballot). That’s about half the votes in Seattle. Based on those numbers, Wilson will need about 54 percent of the outstanding votes to make up her current 11,1134-vote gap. Put another way, she’ll need to gain eight points compared to her election-night showing in order to win.
Is that doable? Seattle’s electoral history suggests it is, although there are other factors at play in this election that I’ll get into in a moment. In 2023, for instance, Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales trailed challenger Tanya Woo by 8.9 points on election night and ended up closing that gap to win by 1.6 points. In 2021, mayoral candidate Lorena González came out of election night 29.6 points behind Harrell, narrowing that gap in late-counted votes to 17.4 points—a 12.2-point gain. Harrell obviously won that race, but late voters overwhelmingly favored González, the progressive candidate in that race.
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As I mentioned, there are other factors at play this time. Harrell is the incumbent, and he had millions of dollars behind him, including not just his own campaign (which has raised around $1.2 million) but a real estate and big business-backed PAC that could accept unlimited contributions (and has raised just over $1.8 million). Three million dollars can buy a lot of attack ads, and Harrell hammered away at Wilson, bombarding voters with online and TV ads, mailers, text messages, and social media buys in the final days of the campaign.
The pro-Harrell ads mocked Wilson as inexperienced and privileged, and Wilson (and her own PAC, which raised a comparatively meager $400,000) chose not to respond in kind, hitting Harrell on policy rather than highlighting his own political and personal shortcomings. These attacks may have made a dent in Wilson’s progressive support in the final days of the campaign, by creating the sense that she would be ill-equipped to handle federal attacks and funding cuts in the remaining years of the Trump Administration.
On the other hand, it’s also likely that some voters were turned off by Harrell’s over-the-top attacks and obvious contempt for his 43-year-old opponent, which could have flipped some votes or inspired some on-the-fence voters to fill out their ballots.
Today’s ballot drop, which will happen around 4 pm, should provide some answers to those questions.
I think it was a mistake to not hit back at Harrell, as voters needed to know WHY Harrell is not suitable to make Seattle more affordable. Without making that case, there are many voters who fell for his post-primary makeover as a “progressive changemaker” since it was left unchallenged. But I think the bigger mistake was Katie did not broaden her progressive base of support. Evans, Foster, and Alexis ran TOGETHER as a progressive slate, and had a much broader base of progressives, which included a lot of Blacks, Latinos and Asians that were missing from Katie’s supporters. Why didn’t Katie run on a slate with them? By not doing so, she perhaps turned off many progressive voters who did not feel included. My fingers are still crossed, but the early numbers don’t lie. Katie did NOT get anywhere near as many votes as the other progressive candidates, and I don’t think it was because of concerns about her experience. Many non-white progressives have a sixth sense when it comes to inclusion, and don’t want to reward those who make them feel as though they are not included.