Analysis: Sawant on the Verge, Bleeding Stops (or Pauses) for SeaTac Minimum Wage, and Outside Chance Remains for Seattle Public Financing

Social­ist Alter­na­tive par­ty can­di­date, Kshama Sawant, appears on the verge of tak­ing the lead and not look­ing back in her race vs. incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Seat­tle City Coun­cilper­son Richard Conlin.

Dur­ing the vote count of Fri­day evening, Sawant won 58.4% of the vote, accord­ing to The Stranger’s David “Goldy” Gold­stein, result­ing in her now sit­ting only 1,237 votes shy of Con­lin’s tal­ly thus far. Accord­ing to King Coun­ty Elec­tions, there are still 33,016 votes left to count in Seat­tle. Not count­ing the hand­ful of votes left to trick­le in, Sawant need only win 51.87% of those 33,016 votes to take the lead. Accord­ing to the Sawant cam­paign, if the trend con­tin­ues, they will win by more than 1.6% by the time all of the votes are counted.

Since Elec­tion Night Tues­day, the trend in votes count­ed has been in favor all of the left-lean­ing or anti-estab­lish­ment can­di­dates in Seat­tle. Seat­tle May­or Mike McGinn won’t win his re-elec­tion bid, but has cut into State Sen­a­tor Ed Mur­ray’s share of the vote to the point that they now sit at 53%-46.5% (Mur­ray-McGinn) after stand­ing at 56%-43% Elec­tion Night. Lib­er­al City Coun­cilper­son Mike O’Brien was always lead­ing by a wide mar­gin, but has only increased his share of the votes to 66.52% vs. busi­ness-backed can­di­date, Albert Shen.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Seat­tle’s Prop. 1, which would pro­vide pub­lic financ­ing for Seat­tle munic­i­pal can­di­dates that qual­i­fied for it, appeared to be set to fail by a sol­id mar­gin on Elec­tion Night with the mea­sure fail­ing at a 46–54 mar­gin. While YES on Seat­tle’s Prop. 1 still remains a dark­horse, that mar­gin is now only 48.78%-51.22% (YES-NO). Again, cal­cu­lat­ing based on the 33,016 votes left to count in Seat­tle, YES on the mea­sure could take the lead if it earns 55.89% of those remain­ing votes.

Con­verse­ly, SeaT­ac’s Prop. 1, which would set a $15/hour min­i­mum wage for air­port and hotel work­ers, appeared set to sail to vic­to­ry with a 54%-46% mar­gin on Elec­tion Night. Unlike in the case of last-minute Seat­tle vot­ers which trend­ed strong­ly toward left-lean­ing can­di­dates, the YES! for SeaT­ac cam­paign worked hard for weeks to encour­age their sup­port­ers to return their bal­lots ear­ly. This has result­ed in a dra­mat­ic drop in their vote mar­gin as more and more votes have been count­ed. Wor­ry­ing­ly, the YES side led by only 55 votes as of the ~ 4:30 PM vote count today. As each day after Elec­tion night saw the YES cam­paign’s share of the vote reduce by a whole per­cent (1%) or more, I can say that I was dread­ing refresh­ing the vote total on my brows­er this evening. Thank­ful­ly, the blood­let­ting has appeared to stopped, or at least paused for the time-being, with vote mar­gin cut by only anoth­er dozen votes result­ing in a 43 vote lead as of the 8:10 PM vote count this evening.

One can assume that both sides of the SeaT­ac Prop. 1 cam­paign will be chas­ing bal­lots to either solid­i­fy or over­take the YES cam­paign’s nar­row­est of leads, but we can only hope that after putting the brakes on their down­ward slide, sup­port­ers of a liv­able wage can actu­al­ly start grow­ing their lead again.