Katie Wilson is still more likely to win

In a resounding middle finger to MAGA, the Democratic Party stomped to key victories all over the country last night—with a huge progressive win in NYC, and a mix of progressive and moderate Dem-over-Republican wins in key races around the country. We also had a clean sweep in Seattle of our City Council races and City Attorney race.

Still, I know from the countless calls, texts, and panicky twitter/bluesky/signal posts, that my Seattle progressive friends are reeling from what feels like a worrying result in our own mayoral race.

While there are certainly some reasons to be concerned, I think the evidence still clearly suggests that the odds favor Katie Wilson.

I don’t believe this is cope - I have heard first and second hand from a half dozen leading, sophisticated data analyst and consultant folks from across Seattle’s political spectrum who work closely with Seattle elections, and they all seem to be thinking similarly:

• The first is that the Wednesday drop tends to have very, very little impact and thus means very little.

• Second, is that late turnout looks rather robust, raising this morning’s scary total of 38% to a more normal 52% this afternoon. That tracks with stories of unusually huge lines at ballot boxes yesterday, especially in left-leaning bastions like Capitol Hill. Election officials have said something similar. That is great, as these votes tend to be much more progressive—or at least they have been in the past. That turnout is also a good bit better than the abysmal turnout of 2023 (~46%), which suggests some returned enthusiasm from younger, more progressive, late-voting voters. And it leaves at least another 115,000 votes that will trend much more progressive to be counted.

• Finally, and most importantly, is that Bruce’s lead is smaller than the normal post-election progressive shift. The last three Mayoral elections have produced 9, 10, and 12 point shifts. Wilson is only behind by 8.

More specifically, on election night, Katie Wilson was behind by 7 and now she’s behind by 8. If we have a remotely normal mayoral post-election night shift, she wins.

A few charts help illustrate this:

Here you can see a smattering of recent Seattle races. All the general election races saw progressive vote share increases over 9%. (For another datapoint, I think my own race was 10%).

The fact that these produce the same pattern as all the recent mayoral races strongly suggests that this is just how the Seattle electorate works in the nowish times, and that Bruce starting in the 53% range likely means he loses.

Here is another example from a Fred Hutch researcher, using the past two mayoral races and this year’s mayoral primary as well. You can see that in all scenarios, a normal shift exceeds what Wilson needs (the grey line) for a win.

Now there is one fly in the ointment that has a lot of people panicking—today’s results. Katie losing a bit of ground really scared some folks. Based on timing, it even appears to have caused betting markets to flip in favor of Harrell, at about 60/40.

This is logical if you don’t know how Seattle elections typically work. Wednesday is rarely a very good day - you are usually still seeing trends associated with early voting. And this summer, during the primary, Wilson saw a notable drop in her vote share as late as Thursday (which is usually supposed to be a great day for progressives), and yet she still gained 8.2%, That is just a hair over enough to win from where she is now, and would give her a 1-point win if it is compared to election night, which is a more direct analog.

Now, it is certainly possible that today’s (very small) count is some secret canary in the coal mine about the larger as-yet uncounted electorate. But we have very little indication of this. In fact, consider the following report from Seattle Times Reporter David Kroman:

This strongly suggests the small number of votes counted today tells us nothing about the likely coming shift. Instead, it tells us more about the early vote - that this small sample was was bad enough to make Tuesday’s results a little crappier for progressives. But while today’s drop felt unnerving, there is still no sign I can see that the vote shift will be out of the normal range. And if it is in the normal range, Wilson wins.

There are other signs the shift will be on the bigger end—the youthful energy and message of the campaign, the national mood and how it showed in elections everywhere else, her turnout machine, and the enormous surge in late drop-box votes, which is normally associated with a younger, more left-leaning electorate. Unless that surge is driven by an older, more conservative electorate moving away from mail-in voting—and we have little indication to believe it is—I think Katie Wilson remains the favorite.

To be more precise, the information we have right now suggests Wilson will end up with a nine to twelve point increase over her election night total (winning by 2 to 5 points) or, possibly, pessimistically, compared to today’s numbers (winning by 1 to 4 points). The blended average of those would be Katie winning by 3%.

While outliers are always possible, the worst case scenario I see based on recent precedent I can find is an 8.2% net gain from election night, with Wilson winning by about 1%. But this is based that on her post-election shift in the primary; primaries typically have fewer young voters. So it is probably pessimistic, weakly supported by the evidence. And if you want to be extra pessimistic for no good reason other than, say, Mariner related trauma, you could assume that this smaller shift will be net of today’s votes, rather than election night. Granted, that’s not how it has worked in the past. And anyway, in such a case, Wilson would still win by a few votes.

Tomorrow, if normal practice holds, they will start counting large numbers of drop box votes. When they release those numbers we should get a much, much better sense of how large the shift might be. Honestly, that will be the first time we have really good information beyond historical precedent to update our assumptions.

Until then, the best bet is we aren’t going to be out of range of historical precedent. If that is true, Wilson wins.

Stay strong!