Former Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell and current Seattle City Council President Lorena González are the current top two candidates in the Emerald City’s 2021 field of fifteen mayoral contenders, with a plurality undecided, a new poll conducted this week for the Northwest Progressive Institute has found.
20% of 617 likely 2021 Top Two voters in Seattle said they were voting for Harrell, while 12% said they were voting for González. 10% said they were voting for Colleen Echohawk, 6% said they were voting for Jessyn Farrell, and another 6% said they were voting for Andrew Grant Houston. 4% said they were voting for Casey Sixkiller and another 4% said they were voting for Arthur Langlie.
3% said they were voting for Lance Randall and 1% said they were voting for James Donaldson. Another 1% said they were voting for Bobby Tucker.
The other candidates — Omari Tahir-Garrett, Clinton Bliss, Henry Dennison, Stan Lippmann, and Don Rivers — did not receive any support in the survey.
32% of respondents (a plurality) are undecided.

A visual of NPI’s poll finding for Mayor of Seattle, 2021
The poll, which was conducted by Change Research for the Northwest Progressive Institute, has a modeled margin of error of 4.3% at the 95% confidence interval. All 617 respondents participated online. The poll was in the field from Monday, July 12th, 2021 through Thursday, July 15th, 2021.
Here are the exact questions that we asked, and the responses that we received:
QUESTION: The candidates for Mayor of Seattle this year are listed below in the order that they will appear on the August Top Two ballot. Who are you voting for?
[See list as it was shown to respondents]
ANSWERS:
- Not sure: 54%
- Bruce Harrell: 15%
- M. Lorena González: 8%
- Colleen Echohawk: 6%
- Jessyn Farrell: 4%
- Andrew Grant Houston: 3%
- Arthur K. Langlie: 3%
- Casey Sixkiller: 2%
- Lance Randall: 2%
- Omari Tahir-Garrett: 0%
- Bobby Tucker: 0%
- James Donaldson: 0%
- Clinton Bliss: 0%
- Henry C. Dennison: 0%
- Stan Lippmann: 0%
- Don L. Rivers: 0%
FOLLOW-UP QUESTION ASKED OF UNDECIDED VOTERS ONLY: If you had to choose, who would you vote for?
ANSWERS:
- Not sure: 62%
- Bruce Harrell: 8%
- M. Lorena González: 6%
- Colleen Echohawk: 6%
- Andrew Grant Houston: 4%
- Casey Sixkiller: 3%
- Jessyn Farrell: 3%
- James Donaldson: 2%
- Lance Randall: 2%
- Arthur K. Langlie: 1%
- Bobby Tucker: 1%
- Clinton Bliss: 0%
- Henry C. Dennison: 0%
- Stan Lippmann: 0%
- Don L. Rivers: 0%
- Omari Tahir-Garrett: 0%
- Would not vote: 2%
COMBINED ANSWERS, BOTH QUESTIONS:
- Not sure: 32%
- Bruce Harrell: 20%
- M. Lorena González: 12%
- Colleen Echohawk: 10%
- Jessyn Farrell: 6%
- Andrew Grant Houston: 6%
- Casey Sixkiller: 4%
- Arthur K. Langlie: 4%
- Lance Randall: 3%
- James Donaldson: 1%
- Bobby Tucker: 1%
- Omari Tahir-Garrett: 0%
- Clinton Bliss: 0%
- Henry C. Dennison: 0%
- Stan Lippmann: 0%
- Don L. Rivers: 0%
- Would not vote: 1%
Bruce Harrell — who the survey crosstabs show is favored by older voters — appears well positioned to move on to the November general election.
Lorena González’s hold on second place, meanwhile, is more tenuous.
That’s because Colleen Echohawk came in just two points behind González. She was the only other mayoral candidate besides Harrell and González to register support in the double digits in this survey.
Echohawk has clearly made a positive impression on Seattle voters despite never having run for office before. She cannot be counted out in this election.
González did just earn the support of The Stranger, the city’s best known left leaning media outlet, and she has enthusiastic support from the labor community, so that could help her hold on to the second place spot. (A plurality of respondents from union households who have an opinion backed González.)
Still, Echohawk has an opportunity to contend for second place.
Jessyn Farrell and Andrew Grant Houston, meanwhile, are tied for fourth place, with each receiving 6%. While they can’t be counted out either, their chances of vaulting into the top two seem much slimmer than Echohawk’s.
The remaining candidates all polled under 5% each or received no support at all, as mentioned above. They are all likely to be eliminated from consideration by voters next month when the August Top Two election is certified.
King County Elections announced on Wednesday that it had mailed over 1.4 million ballots to registered voters for the August Top Two election.
The department expects turnout of 40%, which would mean a return rate of two out of every five ballots. In 2019, the department notes we saw summer turnout of 35% across King County, while in 2017, it was 34%.
Turnout in Seattle will likely be higher than the county as a whole.
Seattle voters have a record of strong participation, and our survey data shows that people are enthusiastic about voting this summer even if they don’t know who they’re voting for yet. A whopping 88% of respondents said they “definitely” plan to vote, while only 8% said they will “probably” vote. 4% said “maybe”.
(As stated, the poll was of likely voters, so anyone who said they weren’t voting was thanked for their time and excused from the survey.)
Since nearly a third of the likely voters are undecided with respect to their vote for mayor, the quality, reach, and effectiveness of the candidates’ home stretch campaigning is going to matter. Polls are snapshots in time. This particular dataset is a reflection of the views of the Seattle electorate before ballots dropped.
There’s only three weeks left to go, yet those three weeks are when about one in three voters indicated to our pollster that they will be making a decision about who they want to serve as Seattle’s chief executive for the next four years.
Ballots in the August Top Two election are due back by Tuesday, August 3rd at 8 PM. A list of drop box locations in Seattle and across Martin Luther King Jr. County is available from King County Elections. Ballots can also be returned through the United States Mail, but we recommend using a drop box.
NPI does not endorse candidates for office and is not aligned with any of the candidates running for elected positions in Seattle this year. No campaigns were involved in the design or execution of this survey.
4 Comments
Thank you for the polling. I am not seeing in the above and curious to know how the online sample was recruited and what steps were taken to be sure they were a good representative sample?
Hi Dan! Great question, and thank you for asking.
Here’s a primer on the methodology and the steps taken to ensure the sample was representative, courtesy of our pollster:
Do you still see Bruce Harrell in the lead? Will you be doing another poll now that there are two candidates?
Hi Leora! Yes, we will be doing another poll of Seattle voters for the general election. That will field in October.
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