Decision Desk HQ retracts call projecting Harrell’s victory in Seattle mayor’s race

The firm Decision Desk HQ has rescinded their projection that incumbent Bruce Harrell would prevail over his challenger Katie Wilson in the Seattle mayor’s race.

The firm, which contracts with KUOW on election results, made the projection Thursday, Nov. 6, based on what they now say was incorrect information on the number of ballots remaining to be counted.

A spokesperson for King County Elections says the office never gave incorrect or outdated numbers to the firm and consistently stated the number of ballots remaining to be counted on Nov. 6 as 100,000.

KUOW paid Decision Desk for embeds displaying results from the primary and general elections this year. Once Decision Desk appeared to project Harrell as winner on Thursday, KUOW made the decision to remove that information from the station's website.

"With about 100,000 ballots still to count and a historical late push that favors the more progressive candidate, we felt it was too soon to go with Decision Desk HQ's call," said KUOW News Director Jason Pagano.

Now, Decision Desk says they made that projection in error.

Scott Tranter is director of data science for Decision Desk HQ. He said they received inaccurate information from King County Elections on Thursday “that there were approximately 71,000 votes remaining in the Seattle mayor election.”

“Based on that many votes remaining, we were confident that Bruce Harrell was going to win that election,” Tranter said.

Tranter says today the firm received an update that there are 100,000 ballots remaining to be counted in Seattle — of which about half are expected to be tabulated today. Based on those numbers, Tranter said Decision Desk HQ is “just going to remove the projection from Bruce Harrell and we’re going to continue to await more official data from the county before a projection is made.”

Halei Watkins, communications manager for King County Elections, said by email Friday: “I don’t know where they got that number because all media questions come through me or Kendall [Hodson] and neither one of us provided a 70k figure for Seattle. We have consistently said about 100k for Seattle as of yesterday’s update.”

Watkins said she’s “honestly a little frustrated” over the incident, adding, “I understand there’s a rush to call races but results take time and are not final until the election is certified on November 25.”

Tranter said the “check mark” that Decision Desk HQ assigns projected winners should not be taken as anything official.

“We don’t call races, we project them. Projections are estimations, they’re forecasts,” he said. “We don’t pick winners here, we tell you what we think, we make a projection.”

Turnout may also complicate projecting a winner this year. In a statement, Decision Desk HQ said: "We expected to see slightly reduced turnout versus four years ago and a total number of ballots returned of just over 250,000 (with some not counted due to challenges and deficiencies)."

But Seattle’s voter turnout has surpassed 2021, with a total number of 279,044 cast in the mayor’s race so far.

DDHQ’s statement continues: “With a multi-verified ~103,000 ballots left to be tabulated (and an increased election day turnout), there is reasonable doubt as to whether or not Harrell's lead holds up as future ballot drops are reported. For those reasons, we are retracting the projection for Seattle Mayor and will continue to report results as they are provided.”