Alright gooners, big news.
For the first time this election, Katie Wilson is up 49.83 percent to Bruce Harrell’s 49.79 percent. Almost everything is counted, with fewer than 10,000 ballots left. This is a tight race.
WHY VOTING IN LOCAL ELECTIONS MATTERS
Katie Wilson is ahead by 91 votes. She needed 54.7 percent of the vote this drop. She got 55.7 percent of it. She’s barely winning. Though these eggs are looking pretty affordable and renter-friendly, don’t count those chickens.
THIS IS EXQUISITE TORTURE
Our on-call experts this cycle provided their wisdom in the minutes after the drop.
Stephen Paolini, who is affiliated with Katie Wilson’s PAC: First, a point of personal privilege. I said what I said. Bruce is fucking cooked … [Wilson’s] lead will only increase. The final margin will be somewhere between a 800-1200 vote lead for Katie … I believe it’s fair to say Katie will be the next mayor of Seattle but we might as well wait one more day to say it officially.”
Michael Fertakis, who worked on Girmay Zahilay’s (officially victorious) campaign: “It’s still too close to call but at this point with the way the votes have been trending every day, Katie Wilson is most likely going to be Seattle’s next mayor.”
Ben Anderstone, who was on Sara Nelson’s campaign: “Still too close to call (because freakish stuff can happen at that margin), but Wilson is definitely favored. She’s won late ballots about 55 percent to 45 percent, and she just has to approach tying the remaining vote. The main reason not to call it: The very last ballots processed are often ballots that need to be reconstructed because the voter filled them out strangely, spilled a sandwich on it, etcetera. Those ballots are oftentimes less left, more representative of the overall vote.”
RECOUNT TRIGGER FINGER
Considering these GLP-1-skinny margins, it’s looking pretty certain that we’ll have some sort of recount. An automatic machine recount will happen if a candidate wins by less than half a percent or less than 2,000 votes. A hand recount will happen if there’s a difference of less than 250 votes and 0.25 percent of the vote total.
According to Halei Watkins at King County Elections, the percentage requirements usually “knocks a race OUT of mandatory recount range,” she wrote in an email. Percentages are stingy like that. Right now, the difference between the two candidates is around 0.04 percent, but it may widen with ensuing ballot drops.
If Wilson’s trajectory holds, “there will be a machine recount but not a hand recount,” Paolini says.
“As far as I can tell there has never been an election result changed by a machine recount, there have been a few times where a hand recount has changed the result,” Paolini says. “But no one reasonably expects an 800 vote difference between recounts. That would be an incredible anomaly.”
We have time until we know definitively whether our next stop is Recount City. No recounts can be triggered until King County Elections finishes its certification process by 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 24. That’s the cut off for when voters can amend signature issues with their ballots. Which is a good reminder: Have you checked your ballot?
However, campaigns can request a recount regardless of one being triggered automatically by the vote count. If they do that, they’ll have to pay. For a machine recount, campaigns must pay a deposit of $0.15 per ballot. It costs a deposit of $0.25 per ballot for a hand recount. That may be an appealing option for campaigns with lots of funds left to spend.
Who will be the mayor? We have some strong hunches. But, we’ll have to wait to be sure. Only time—and those straggler ballots—will tell.
Correction: We wrote that the difference between the candidates was around 0.4 percent. It’s really 0.04 percent. We dropped the zero, and regret the error.
It’s over. It was over on Election Night.
Brucetown is never over! 😂
@1: Why do you think Katie Wilson will be a good mayor for Seattle?
@1
DOUG is correct. This late liberal swing has happened every election. By now it should be old news.
@1
DOUG is correct. This late liberal swing has happened every election. By now it should be old news.
ok I’m not sure how I did that, but it just proves DOUG is doubly correct
@6 – let’s call
it a Triplet:
Doug’s
likely
fucking Correct.
poor wormmy, jr–
let;s Hope he doesn’t
Blow him some Circuitry!
sorry
Bruce!
had you
only Pivoted
LEFT on Day ONE!
@1 you are right in more ways than you are probably thinking about.
@3. I never said I did. But it’s funny that in a post about numbers and facts you take it that way. Sorry to trigger you.
@7 Edgy.
Here’s another fact: Jenny Durkan is the worst mayor Seattle has had in the 33 years I’ve lived here. And she makes Bruce Harrell look like AOC.
@8: I’m not triggered. No need to obfuscate, I just want to get an idea of what makes you enthusiastic about her candidacy, not slog staffers, but you. No angles, just a straightforward question I thought you would have enjoyed answering.
@9 no idea what that is supposed to mean or why it would be relevant to this election.
@10 did you read DOUGs original post and follow up? Never once did he portray enthusiasm or any emotion regarding the results. He commented on numbers. Learn to read 🙂
@11 It’s meant to mean that you seem to think that electing a Leftie as mayor will signal the demise of Seattle, but electing moderate morons like Durkan (and Murray) is actually worse.
@12: It’s been clear he wants Katie Wilson for weeks now. If he’s only for her to be against Harrell, that’s an answer.
@14 Yes, I voted for Katie Wilson. What a shock. For pretty much one issue: Transit. When was the last time Bruce Harrell took a bus? Junior high?
I’ve often mentioned the time he trolled Seattle with the basketball, which doesn’t seem like much, except that it showed how out-of-touch he is, just like Nickels and Murray and Durkan before him.
Bye, bye Bruce. You weren’t the worst mayor—a solid six out of ten.
@13 not the demise. Cities rise and fall all the time but we are certainly going to enter a period of economic stagnation and a general decline in livability as homelessness, petty crime and anti social behavior is left unchecked in the name of idealogy. I think you’ll find actual governance is a lot harder than being a policy wonk and having idealistic notions where you can endlessly tax people and business with no unintended consequences. I’ll guess we’ll see who ends up being correct.
@9 Genuinely impressive that Jenny Durkan is always a legitimate contender for “worst mayor of Seattle” when her immediate predecessor was Ed Murray.
I am in the ICU with an intense case of Katiemania! Yet my cautious side must point out the wisdom of the great philosopher Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
@17 Yeah, it’s a toss up. (Though technically Durkan’s immediate predecessor was Tim Burgess, who fucking sucks too).
@18: “I am in the ICU with an intense case of Katiemania”
It is a pestilence, a contagion! Doctor Thumpus prescribes an injection of Brucicillin directly into the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex! 😆
And speaking of Ed Murray, remember when Bruce Harrell dismissed the sexual assault allegations against him because “they happened 33 years ago.” What a guy.
Harrell and all but one of his predecessor mayors made the terrible, unforgivable, and unforced error of personally micro-managing and screwing up sdot projects meant to speed transit, provide alternatives to driving, make active transporation better, and make our neighborhoods safer. Car culture enwrapped their vision so they can only offend urbanites that loath car dependence. Until our mayor deals squarely with car dependency in urban areas they can only pretend to be progressive. One cannot be a “pro climate” mayor without relegating single occupancy cars to tertiary roles in urban transport. Harrell ‘s replacement of Spotts at sdot was a clear sign of regression, monkeying around with every fucking project to make it worse for transit and bikes highlighted his inability to lead Seattle into the future. I wish him well but mayor material he is not.
Here’s hoping Katie is up to the challenge and wishing her well!
@22: Do you have the slightest sense of self-awareness that you are a fucking fanatic?
@21, etc.: Sad, to be such a bitter grudge-holder you simply must lash out at your many curated hate-objects, even in the very moment when you should be savoring your (apparent) victory. (Ever wonder why you tend to lose more than you win? Nope, didn’t think so.)
Oh, and BTW, Harrell WON because he dismissed the hateful rumor-mongering about Murray, after Harrell’s opponent had brought it up in a last-minute smear attempt. You really don’t know much about this, do you?
@3 I think the better question is… why do any of you think Bruce will be a good mayor for Seattle when he has already proven he isn’t?
@24 Many Curated Hate Objects was my least-favorite exhibition at MOMA last year.
Wilson Town! Wilson World! Wilson Universe! The unstoppable Katie Wilson we’ll call her! Undefeated! She slayed the dragon! Now we can all worship her the way she deserves!
mightn’t
it be Better
holding our
Pols to Account?