The conventional wisdom in politics is that older, more conservative voters vote early and younger, more progressive voters weigh in later.
As more votes got counted today, Amazon-backed candidates Alex Pedersen and Egan Orion both saw their vote shares drop, 3.28 percent and 1.31 percent, respectively. And progressive candidates like Tammy Morales and Dan Strauss saw their numbers go up, 4.86 and 2.55 percentage points, respectively. Morales is the highest vote share earner in any City Council race so far with 49.55 percent.
Overall voter turnout numbers in Seattle also continue to rise, with council elections getting anywhere from 34 to 40 percent turnout, depending on the district. Ballard's District 6 and Capitol Hill's District 3 have the highest turnout so far, according to King County Elections.
District 1 Council Member Lisa Herbold is now at 49.46 percent (up from 48.55 percent yesterday), and District 5 Council Member Debora Juarez is up to 44.36 percent (up from 43.12 percent yesterday). That puts those two incumbents closer to the 50-percent bar that Mayor Jenny Durkan called them out as failing to reach on election day. But while the slate of progressives is getting closer to 50 percent, today’s results shouldn’t give any candidate reason to relax.
Herbold’s general election opponent, Amazon-backed Phil Tavel, only received 33 percent of the votes at latest count, but bad cop Brendan Kolding also received 17.09 percent of the vote. That means Herbold’s opposition was able to get to 50 percent. The general election is likely to slant more liberal, but an incumbent can’t feel too comfortable looking at 50 percent opposition in a primary.
District 3 Council Member Kshama Sawant is facing a similar story, albeit a bit more dire. She’s still in first place at 35.03 percent (up from 32.75 percent on election night), which means her opponents were able to receive nearly two-thirds of the primary votes. She will need to get support from voters who went for Zachary DeWolf (12.58 percent), and Ami Nguyen (9.35 percent) in order to win.
Sawant’s Amazon-backed opponent, Egan Orion, has seen his share of the vote drop to 22.43 percent in today’s returns, but he’s likely to pick up all of Safe Seattle-backed Pat Murakami’s voters (13.47 percent), which puts him at about 36 percent of the primary vote. Where Logan Bowers’ upzone-focused voters (6.9 percent) decide to go may decide the election in District 3.
