Thursday election update: Kshama Sawant pulls further ahead of Richard Conlin

Seat­tle City Coun­cil can­di­date Kshama Sawan­t’s momen­tum has some­times slowed in the days since Novem­ber 5th, but it has nev­er stopped.

Moments ago, King Coun­ty Elec­tions pub­lished new num­bers that reflect the lat­est batch of tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots. The fresh results show that Sawant is now ahead of incum­bent City Coun­cilmem­ber Richard Con­lin by more than 1,000 votes.

Yes­ter­day, Sawant had a four hun­dred and two vote lead. As of today, she has a lead of 1,148 votes, and we would­n’t be sur­prised if it was big­ger tomorrow.

If she defeats Con­lin, Sawant will be the first open­ly declared Social­ist ever elect­ed to the Seat­tle City Coun­cil. Owing to the adop­tion of Seat­tle Char­ter Amend­ment #19, she would serve only a two-year term. She could choose to run for reelec­tion in the dis­trict where she lives or run for one of the at-large seats.

In the mean­time, she’ll have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to shape how Seat­tle is governed.

It took more than a week for Sawant to actu­al­ly over­take Con­lin, bring­ing back mem­o­ries of Sharon Peaslee’s upset vic­to­ry in 2011 and the tri­umph of HJR 4204 in 2007 (sim­ple majori­ties for school levies).

While the out­comes in oth­er called races and oth­er close races have not changed, Sawant has accom­plished some­thing remark­able: she has come from behind late in the eleventh hour to take the lead (and most like­ly win, too).

Mean­while, in oth­er close races:

• After shrink­ing to just nine­teen votes yes­ter­day, the gap between yes and no on SeaT­ac Propo­si­tion 1 (the Good Jobs ini­tia­tive) expand­ed to fifty-three votes today, a very good sign for the mea­sure’s prospects of passing.
• Steve Kas­ner con­tin­ues to trail incum­bent Belle­vue City Coun­cilmem­ber Kevin Wal­lace in the con­test for Posi­tion #6. Wal­lace had a two hun­dred vote lead of yes­ter­day; he added one vote to his lead today.
• Seat­tle Propo­si­tion 1 (pub­lic financ­ing) remains behind by 3,106 votes.
• Demo­c­rat Mary Hall remains ahead of Repub­li­can Gary Alexan­der in the Thurston Coun­ty Audi­tor’s race.
• Kit­sap Coun­ty has final­ly joined the Yes on I‑522 camp (we’ll have more on this lat­er tonight in a sep­a­rate post).

King Coun­ty Elec­tions’ next update will be at around 4:30 PM tomorrow.