Nikkita Oliver overtakes Sara Nelson to assume the lead for Seattle City Council #9

Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers, we have anoth­er lead change in a Seat­tle city­wide race! Today, author and activist Nikki­ta Oliv­er ascend­ed to the first place spot in the con­test for Seat­tle City Coun­cil Posi­tion #9, edg­ing Fre­mont Brew­ing cofounder Sara Nel­son in the fifth count of bal­lots in this election.

Oliv­er now has 40.15% of the vote, while Nel­son has 39.52%.

Bri­an­na Thomas remains in third place with 13.4%.

Here’s the num­bers for the top three candidates:

Seattle City Council Position #9 (At-Large)

1. Nikki­ta Oliv­er: 40.15% (78,774 votes)
2. Sara Nel­son: 39.52% (77,546 votes)
3. Bri­an­na Thomas: 13.4% (26,300 votes)

As of press time, the cam­paign had not respond­ed to the lat­est results on Twit­ter, though last week it did pub­lish a cel­e­bra­to­ry state­ment. That read:

“We’re advanc­ing to the gen­er­al elec­tion! Thank you to all of the amaz­ing vol­un­teers, part­ner orga­ni­za­tions, and sup­port­ers who’ve put in years of work to make this pos­si­ble. We’re so excit­ed to take this peo­ple-pow­ered ener­gy all the way to City Hall in November!”

Last week, we saw not one, but two lead changes in the race for Seat­tle City Attor­ney, as Nicole Thomas-Kennedy surged from third place to first, zoom­ing past incum­bent Pete Holmes as well as Holmes’ oth­er chal­lenger, Ann Davison.

Nicole Thomas-Kennedy and Nikki­ta Oliv­er are both sup­port­ed by the city’s most pro­gres­sive wings and received the endorse­ment of The Stranger.

NPI’s July 2021 polling sug­gest­ed that the top vote get­ting can­di­date in the race for Posi­tion #9 would be Oliv­er. 26% of respon­dents to our sur­vey last month said they were vot­ing for Oliv­er, while 11% said they were vot­ing for Nel­son and 6% said they were vot­ing for Thomas. 50% — half — said they were not sure.

On Elec­tion Night, it was Nel­son who had the largest share of the vote — a plu­ral­i­ty, not a major­i­ty — and a healthy lead over Oliv­er, hav­ing evi­dent­ly picked up a lot of sup­port between the dates our sur­vey field­ed and August 3rd.

How­ev­er, that lead has total­ly evap­o­rat­ed and first place belongs to Oliver.

The left-lean­ing late bal­lot boom is also lift­ing Lore­na González, the cur­rent Posi­tion #9 office­hold­er, who is leav­ing the Coun­cil to run for Mayor.

González was The Stranger’s pick for the city’s top job and was also heav­i­ly backed by the region’s labor move­ment along with the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Party.

González has sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut Bruce Har­rel­l’s lead down since Elec­tion Night, pulling with­in just a few points of her for­mer col­league. Har­rel­l’s share of the vote has shrunk while hers has grown. She now has 32.09% of the vote, while Har­rell has 34.10%. For con­text, on Elec­tion Night, the gap between Har­rell and González was about ten points. That is some seri­ous move­ment in late ballots!

We know that a huge per­cent­age of those vot­ers who turned out in Seat­tle did so in the final hours of the elec­tion — very few peo­ple vot­ed ear­ly — so it makes sense that these post-Elec­tion Night drops are high­ly consequential.

In our poll, 88% of respon­dents said they were “def­i­nite­ly” going to vote, yet in three out of the four city­wide races, majori­ties of them said they were unde­cid­ed even after being asked twice who they were vot­ing for.

King Coun­ty Elec­tions reports that it only has 1,700 bal­lots left to count across the whole coun­ty, so the ground is unlike­ly to shift much fur­ther in any of the August Top Two races pri­or to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The rest of the tab­u­la­tions will con­sist of only small num­bers of bal­lots. Con­se­quent­ly, any­one who has a lead as of tonight is almost cer­tain­ly going to have that lead a week from tomor­row when the final results are cer­ti­fied by the can­vass­ing boards.