Here’s the exact ques­tions we asked and the respons­es we received:

Already voted

QUESTION: In the elec­tion for Seat­tle City Coun­cil Dis­trict #3, who did you vote for?

Respon­dents who told us that they had already vot­ed were shown this question. 

• Joy Hollingsworth: 59%
• Alex Hud­son: 34%
• Do not recall: 7%
• Did not vote on this: 0%

Haven’t yet voted

QUESTION: The can­di­dates for Seat­tle City Coun­cil Dis­trict #3 are list­ed below in the order they appear on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot. Who are you vot­ing for?

Respon­dents who told us that they had not yet vot­ed were shown this question. 

• Joy Hollingsworth: 38%
• Alex Hud­son: 20%
• Not sure: 42%

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION ASKED OF UNDECIDED VOTERS ONLY: If you had to choose, who would you vote for? Links to the can­di­dates’ web­sites are here if you’d like to learn more about them:

Joy Hollingsworth
Alex Hud­son

If you had to choose, who would you vote for?

• Joy Hollingsworth: 25%
• Alex Hud­son: 5%
• Not sure: 66%
• Would not vote: 4%

Aggregate responses

COMBINED ANSWERS (AGGREGATE), ALL QUESTIONS:

• Joy Hollingsworth: 52%
• Alex Hud­son: 28%
• Not sure: 16%
• Do not recall: 3%
• Would not vote: 1%
• Did not vote on this: 0%

Joy Hollingsworth’s name was always shown to respon­dents first and Alex Hud­son’s name was always shown sec­ond, as that is the order the can­di­dates are list­ed on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot. The can­di­dates’ pho­tographs from the voter’s pam­phlet state­ment were shown to vot­ers along­side their names.

Our sur­vey of 327 like­ly 2023 Seat­tle City Coun­cil Dis­trict #3 gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Octo­ber 31st, until today, Fri­day, Novem­ber 3rd. The poll was con­duct­ed entire­ly online for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Change Research and has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 5.7%.

Fol­low this link if you’re inter­est­ed in a detailed primer on the survey’s method­ol­o­gy along with infor­ma­tion about who took the poll.

We asked fol­low-up ques­tions of respon­dents who had already vot­ed for both Hollingsworth and Hud­son to tell us about their choice in their own words.

Hollingsworth sup­port­ers cit­ed Har­rel­l’s endorse­ment as an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion, along with her biog­ra­phy and pub­lic safe­ty stances.

Why vote for Joy Hollingsworth?

“Her expe­ri­ence, she val­ues pub­lic safe­ty, she seems to be able to work well with stake­hold­ers, she is sup­port­ed by the may­or, I agree with her stand on issues affect­ing the city, she is smart and artic­u­late, she grew up in D3 [Seat­tle City Coun­cil Dis­trict #3],” said a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic female vot­er from Capi­tol Hill / First Hill between the ages of fifty and sixty-four.

“She has expe­ri­ence and great his­to­ry of con­nec­tions in Dis­trict 3 area. And she is strong­ly focused on pub­lic safe­ty, which I think should be Seat­tle’s high­est pri­or­i­ty,” said an inde­pen­dent female vot­er between the ages of thir­ty-five and forty-nine who lives in the south­east­ern part of the district.

“She is the bet­ter can­di­date. She grew up in Seat­tle and appears gen­uine­ly invest­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty. Not every­one with the polit­i­cal sci­ence degree knows what is best. I am cer­tain­ly a STEM pro­fes­sion­al, but hor­ti­cul­ture and expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing is extreme­ly valu­able as well,” said a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic male vot­er between the ages of eigh­teen to thir­ty-four from Capi­tol Hill / First Hill.

And here’s a few very short com­ments we received about Joy:

• Expen­sive expe­ri­ence across a lot of dif­fer­ent rel­e­vant areas.
• Focus on crime and stop cod­dling the homeless.
• Lis­ten­ing to com­mu­ni­ty, impor­tant rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the dis­trict and council.
• Long Cen­tral Area pres­ence, more mod­er­ate stances.

Hud­son sup­port­ers cit­ed their per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions with her and said she was well pre­pared to gov­ern, with well thought out posi­tions on issues like transit.

Why vote for Alex Hudson?

“I’ve met her and got a chance to talk about her views and expe­ri­ence and what she would do on the Coun­cil. I liked her ideas and aligned with her pro­gres­sive but prag­mat­ic views,” said a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic female vot­er from the south­east­ern part of the dis­trict between the ages of eigh­teen and thirty-four.

“She has a much bet­ter plat­form on hous­ing and tran­sit than her oppo­nent, and while my views on polic­ing don’t entire­ly align with Hud­son’s I felt even less aligned with Hollingsworth’s focus on unre­al­is­tic hir­ing goals for SPD and her gen­er­al exag­ger­a­tion of the state of crime in Seat­tle,” said a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic male vot­er from Capi­tol Hill / First Hill between the ages of eigh­teen and thirty-four.

“That was the tough­est choice on the entire bal­lot: Alex got my vote based on her work his­to­ry with hous­ing and trans­porta­tion plan­ning,” said a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic male vot­er from Capi­tol Hill / First Hill between the ages of fifty and six­ty-four. (Empha­sis is the respondent’s.) 

And here’s a few very short com­ments we received about Alex:

• Pol­i­cy expe­ri­ence, strong over­all cre­den­tials. Good ideas for city plan­ning and growth.
• Pub­lic tran­sit focus and a real­i­ty based approach to policing.
• Knowl­edge­able of the job. Does not sup­port present police behavior.
• Urban­ist with vision for future of Seattle.

Hollingsworth’s strength in the sur­vey stems from her appeal to many groups of vot­ers. She has major­i­ty sup­port among strong Democ­rats, inde­pen­dents, and Repub­li­cans, for exam­ple, which is impres­sive. We just don’t see that very often.

She also has the sup­port of 62% of respon­dents in Madrona, Leschi, and the Cen­tral Dis­trict and the sup­port of 58% of respon­dents in Mont­lake, Madi­son Park, Madi­son Val­ley, Portage Bay, and East­lake. On Capi­tol Hill and First Hill, it’s a clos­er con­test, but Hollingsworth leads there, too, with 44% to Hud­son’s 33%.

Polls can’t pre­dict elec­toral out­comes, they can only sug­gest what might hap­pen, but these sur­vey results are a cer­tain­ly com­pelling piece of evi­dence that Hollingsworth’s cam­paign is res­onat­ing with vot­ers and is on track to prevail.

You might have noticed ear­li­er that 48% of our sam­ple has already vot­ed, while 51% have yet to vote. His­tor­i­cal­ly, in our polling, the already vot­ed sub­sam­ple has been a good indi­ca­tor of how the results will turn out, because peo­ple who have already vot­ed have come to a deci­sion they can tell us about.

It’s not uncom­mon in non­par­ti­san local races for a lot of peo­ple to be unsure who they are going to sup­port right up until they sit down to vote. We’ve pub­lished, on many occa­sions, poll find­ings in which the largest group of vot­ers were unde­cid­ed. We’re very com­fort­able hav­ing a sam­ple in which a sub­stan­tial num­ber of vot­ers report that they have already vot­ed (which, it should be not­ed, is not the same thing as hav­ing returned a bal­lot — that’s a sub­se­quent step!)

And remem­ber, we saw a lead for Hollingsworth among those who haven’t vot­ed, too. Hollingsworth also picked up far more sup­port than Alex Hud­son did when we nudged not sure vot­ers in the not-yet-vot­ed group to make a decision.

Our col­league Ben Sul­li­van of Change Research, who over­saw the field­ing of this sur­vey for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, not­ed: “We aren’t see­ing a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence in the views of peo­ple who have already vot­ed and those who have not yet vot­ed, so even if those who have already vot­ed are over­rep­re­sent­ed here, it should­n’t skew the out­comes much.”

Two years ago, NPI com­mis­sioned Change Research to han­dle the field­ing for our inau­gur­al polls of the Seat­tle elec­torate. In sev­en out of sev­en city­wide con­tests, the can­di­date who led in our Octo­ber 2021 sur­vey of the elec­torate went on to win. More analy­sis is avail­able in this Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate post.

Lat­er today, we’ll bring you more find­ings from our pre­elec­tion poll of Seat­tle City Coun­cil Dis­trict #3, includ­ing vot­ers’ views on the hous­ing levy!