Wilson’s lead increases in Seattle mayoral race, leaving Harrell further behind

Katie Wilson held onto her lead a week into ballot counting in Seattle’s mayoral race.

Wilson was 1,346 votes ahead of incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell after Tuesday’s ballot drop. She'd been up 91 votes the day before.

About 1,400 ballots remain to be counted, according to Halei Waktins, communications director at King County’s election department.

The race is still within the margin for a recount.

The Wilson campaign stopped just short of declaring victory on Tuesday.

"We want to wait until every vote has been counted, but we believe that we've won this race," the campaign said in a statement to KUOW.

The Harrell campaign released the following: "While not the direction we were hoping for, this remains a very close race, and we want to ensure every vote is counted."

County officials will certify the results of this election on Nov. 25. The state certifies the following week. A machine recount would take place after certification, if fewer than 2,000 votes separate the candidate and less than a half a percent of the total votes cast for both.

Both Harrell and Wilson and their teams have been pounding the pavement in recent days, curing ballots. A tiny fraction of ballots in every election get rejected – about 1,540 such challenged ballots remained for this race, as of Tuesday – because a voter forgot to sign their ballot envelope, or the signature doesn’t match what election officials have on file. The campaigns are now trying to contact voters who need to cure their ballots. The deadline for curing is Nov. 24 , the day before county officials certify the vote.

With turnout in Seattle topping 55%, it’s been a wild week of counting. After an early lead for Bruce Harrell, results released Thursday and Friday saw Wilson closing on him. She pulled ahead by just 91 votes on Monday.

In Seattle elections, it’s become the norm for later ballot counts to favor the more left-leaning candidate. In this race, that’s Wilson, a progressive activist who identifies as a Democrat and a socialist. She founded a nonprofit that advocates for progressive causes, including taxes on big businesses and higher wages for low-paid workers. Her campaign centered the city’s lack of affordable housing and its high cost of food and child care.

Harrell, who’s liberal but tacks more to the political center than Wilson, slammed his opponent on the campaign trail for what he called a lack of managerial and political experience. Harrell sat on the City Council from 2008 to 2020, briefly serving as interim mayor for five days in 2017 after the resignation of Ed Murray.

This general election has been a tougher fight for Wilson than the August primary election, when she decisively beat Harrell by 18,500 votes. In the last 20 years, no sitting mayor who lost the primary went on to win in November.

Election officials have had to re-tally votes in only two Seattle races – neither for mayor – since 2001, the last year for which King County retains such data. In 2015, Lisa Herbold’s first bid for City Council went to a recount in the general election. And in 2003, another council seat race was re-tallied in the primary election – Jean Godden won that bout and went on to prevail in the general.

Seattle hasn’t seen a mayoral matchup as close as Harrell-Wilson since 2001, when Greg Nickels defeated Mark Sidran by 3,158 votes. Nickels was also the last mayor to win a second term, in 2005.