Progressives tower over moderates in early Seattle primary results
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Three moderate Seattle incumbents continued to lag behind progressive challengers in the latest vote counts from Tuesday's primary election, in an early sign that Seattle voters may be looking for change.
Why it matters: The initial results suggest Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, City Attorney Ann Davison and City Council President Sara Nelson are in danger of losing their seats — although there is still a long way to go until November.
The latest: After two days of vote counting, Harrell fell even further behind progressive organizer Katie Wilson, who led the incumbent mayor by more than 4 percentage points in Wednesday's tally.
- Davison, meanwhile, was capturing only about 36% of the vote to challenger Erika Evans' 53%, while Nelson trailed Dionne Foster, the former executive director of a progressive nonprofit, by nearly 18 percentage points as of Wednesday.
State of play: More ballots will be counted in the coming days, potentially shifting the results.
Yes, but: Typically in Seattle, later ballots trend leftward, suggesting that progressives' leads will only increase in later vote counts, local political consultant Stephen Paolini told Axios.
What they're saying: "Across the board, it was not a good night for moderates," political consultant Crystal Fincher told Axios about Tuesday's early results.
- She said the numbers suggest voter dissatisfaction with some of the policies pursued by the incumbents, such as Nelson's 2024 proposal to roll back a new minimum wage law for gig workers.
- "People saw a council that got elected to work on public safety, eliminating homelessness and fixing housing problems — and none of those problems have been fixed," political consultant Michael Charles told Axios.
Between the lines: Paolini said President Trump's election last year has made left-leaning voters in blue cities like Seattle crave more ambitious local leadership, because they "feel if anything good is going to happen in the next four years, it's going to happen locally."
- That's reflected in the mayor's race, where Wilson has "focused relentlessly" on improving future affordability, while Harrell's campaign has emphasized "let's not go backwards," political consultant Sandeep Kaushik told Axios.
- "I do think the mayor has a good case to make that things are better now than they were four years ago," Kaushik told Axios, citing a recent decline in crime and "fewer visible encampments."
- In the future, though, Kaushik said, Harrell would do better to "focus on explaining to voters what he will do for them over the next four years if they re-elect him."
Caveat: Turnout looks like it is trending low this primary election, Paolini said.
- Those types of primaries typically favor the most engaged voters — and, in Seattle, those are usually left-leaning progressives, he said.
- "None of these races should be called," Paolini said, noting that general elections feature "a different set of voters."
What we're watching: If Wilson's lead over Harrell increases as more primary votes are counted.
- If Wilson ends up with more than 50% of the primary vote, that would make it "extremely difficult" for Harrell to win in November, Charles said.