More progressive candidates have gained around 6 points each since the first Election Night tally
There are two types of voters in the City of Seattle. Early deciders who tend to back moderate, pro-business, and pro-policing candidates. And the rest of us who vote on Election Day.
The results for the 2021 General Election aren’t final yet but the latest drops have sealed the deal. There aren’t enough ballots left to count to change the outcomes. Winners have been declared.
A look at the change in vote totals from Tuesday, November 2nd shows just how solid the progressive shift remains in Seattle’s voting process as the state’s transition to all-mail and drop box voting has become the norm.
In 2019, the phenomenon powered the incredible reversal of Kshama Sawant’s victory in District 3.
In 2021, the early, moderate voter support was too strong for the most progressive candidates to overcome. But there were still big shifts.
Mayor-Elect Bruce Harrell’s total dwindled from 65% to 59% of the tallied vote, a 12-point reversal. Lorena González will still finish far behind the Seattle political veteran with Central District roots. She has mustered only around 47% of “late,” Election Day and later votes.
The City Council races show results that split more radically from the early voters. In Position 9, activist Nikkita Oliver won the majority of votes tallied after Election Day and will finish with under a 6-point loss to business owner Sara Nelson, a big change from Nelson’s 60% Election Night showing. Meanwhile in the Position 8 of the citywide seats, incumbent Teresa Mosqueda’s early declaration of victory turned out fully justified as she has stretched her lead by nearly 7 percentage points.
An equally major shift also has taken place in the City Attorney’s race. Republican and public safety candidate Ann Davison still wins the position handily with just under 52% of the vote but misdemeanor law reformist and police abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy made things more than interesting by sweeping up more than 54% of late votes.
“The campaigns are over, but the movement goes on,” Thomas Kennedy said Tuesday.
https://twitter.com/ntkallday/status/1458132524731813888
The shift is also seen in Port of Seattle results where first-time, progressive candidates knocked off more experienced foes as more and more ballots were tallied.
In the end, most results of Seattle’s 2021 Election Night held but many of the extremes of the underlying analyses and explanations have since been pushed aside. There might be a “clear mandate” or two in the bunch but the split between those who vote early in Seattle and the younger, less wealthy voters who finish ballots later in the process is as stark as ever.
Meanwhile, District 3 is jumping back into election mode with a recall vote all its own. The fight over Kshama Sawant’s council seat is set to flare up with special election ballots going out later in the month for a December 7th special recall vote only for District 3 citizens. One key takeaway from November is clear: The night of December 7th, we will only know half the story.
Officials say Seattle’s turnout has reached 55%. In 2017 in the last mayoral election, the city also produced a 50% turnout. King County Elections will update vote totals daily at 4 PM up until the ballot is certified just before Thanksgiving.
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Reports of the death of the progressive movement have been greatly exaggerated
So much for all the “THIS IS DESTRUCTION” people coming out of nowhere on forums. Progressives have work to do and they’ll be back. So much for waiting for all the votes to be counted before boasting and setting narratives across media landscape. NTK got hosed by the media and would have won if she didn’t have an uphill battle of the Times and local media pushing THEIR candidate.
Hosed or exposed?
She lost because all you have to do is go outside and look around to see the destruction that policies even less radical than hers have wreaked upon this city….
NTK would have won if she didn’t post a bunch of toxic stuff on twitter – you can’t blame the media for reporting on it.
NTK was her own worst enemy. She showed Seattle who she is, cheering on the destruction of businesses in Seattle and in other cities, calling arsonists and at least 1 bomber “heroes”, this is just not something most people think is good for the city. In fact, I would wager a good number of people who voted for her based on her misleading, softball ads were unaware of her actual beliefs and would not have voted for her had they known of them. The site on Twitter that exposed some of her worst stuff only had 300 followers. The mainstream media didn’t show anywhere near her worst tweets, and from the looks of Nextdoor and talking to my neighbors, many didn’t even see the coverage that the tweets got. Even Ann Davison’s commercial shared very few of the really out there, violence-encouragement. When you have a candidate talking about buying an AR15, talking about guillotines, and calling felonious behavior heroic, that’s pretty darned out there. Her commercial didn’t at all talk about what she was truly proposing. If you asked the average person in Seattle what they think serious misdemeanors are (and there are plenty of them) I doubt most would be able to tell you. My neighbors appear to think misdemeanors are parking tickets vs. actual violent crimes, gun crimes, DV, etc.
Nextdoor is full of karens who whine about anything left of Ronald Reagan. The rest of your post isn’t worth defending. Davison has zero experience. Ran a grifter campaign and fooled everyone in Seattle into voting for a Trumper. What a joke.
You’re either a troll or just completely oblivious to the scenario staring you right in the face. Please keep in mind, I voted for NTK but the fact that NTK lost to someone with zero experience and a republican is a complete joke.
NTK should have had an incredibly easy path to victory but as everyone else (but you) has said, she was her own worst enemy and didn’t know how to own her previous statements.
Davidson had zero experience? Pete Holmes was a bankruptcy attorney before he was elected and NTK graduated law school five years ago. Who was more experIenced?
“The rest of your post isn’t worth defending.” Yes, since you have no possible defense to someone who tweets about guillotines and buying an AR15, calls felonious behavior heroic and jokes about a DV dismemberment – I can see why you don’t want to take on those actions by your candidate.
You seem to know an awful lot about Nextdoor – sure you’re not a Karen too? ;-) [snark off]
I’d say it’s about the same ratio of opinions as I see on here. And everyone deserves a platform to voice their opinion, without blatant disregard or being called names. Have you ever asked someone voicing a concern why they feel that way? I rarely see that – no, we usually jump to conclusions and use words like NIMBY to try and silence them. That won’t accomplish much – change in general, and gaining each others trust. What a shame.
Hey there Alt-Left “cow-person”, (instead of cowboy) who likes to call everything they disagree with a “joke”. Exactly how did Ann Davison ‘fool’ everyone in Seattle to vote for her? Explanation please, thank you so much in advance! 🙂
Honest question here. NTK, in my opinion, hosed herself on two fronts: those tweets (you know what I’m referring to), and her inconsistent defense of those tweets (stating that they didn’t matter as they were made before she was running for office and shouldn’t be taken seriously, and then saying that they were satire or sarcasm). I’d have respected her more if she’d just owned up. But to say they shouldn’t have been taken seriously since it was before she was running for office straight up makes me think she’s just another slimy politician wannabe trying to get out of a jam. Are you not troubled at all by her inconsistency and apparent flip-flopping? I ask because honesty that troubles me and seems to parallel the mental gymnastics the far right does to excuse Trump’s bad behavior. You see no parallel there?
When the alternative is a woman who wants to throw everyone in jail for petty crimes and changed to become a Republican AFTER Trump, and supports Trump by her own admission, I don’t care what NTK tweeted.
Then honestly I don’t care what you think as you’re being a drama queen, lashing out and behaving as a child would and therefore you don’t deserve the respect I usually try to show. I don’t feel that drunk driving and domestic violence are petty crimes, and I’m pretty sure victims of those crimes agree.
Enjoy your sulking and being a keyboard warrior, and bye Felicia to NTK.
No one ever said about throwing everyone in jail for petty crimes. Not Ann Davison, not the people voted for her.
And you may not care about NTK’s tweets, plenty of people did and they held their nose and elected a Republican in a City where 8% of people voted for Trump.
One would hope that this brings a little introspection onto your trolling… But that might be an over-expectation.
Ann Davison has made no such statements, and it’s judges, not prosecutors, who sentence.
Can you imagine if a Trumper tweeted the location of police cars while: Talking about her mental health meds, calling arsonists and bomber heroes, tweeting pictures of guillotines atop a police station, talking about starting a guillotine club, talking about buying land in the woods for direction actions on 2 major cities, and calling burning of businesses “a good start” ? We would call that person an extremist loon supporting domestic terrorism.
Thank you Jen, so crazy how the Alt-left is so similar to the. Alt-right.
NTK lost to a Republican in Seattle a year after Biden won 92% of the vote here. If this isn’t a rejection of the Abolish the Police and decriminalize crime leftist non-sense, I don’t know what is.
I voted NTK because Davison is a Trump supporter, by her own admission. That’s not even close to as bad as NTK tweeting out about cops being bad. I may have to consider a love to Portland. Sometimes it feels like the south in this city. So many racist dog whistles and anti-poor sentiments. It’s gross. Also Nextdoor is the biggest joke of a platform there is. Bored housewives who troll all day hating in homeless. Fun use of time….give me a break. I’m embarrassed to be from Seattle. A Republican??? For real? Insanity. Gross.
Davison specifically stated she voted for Biden, not Trump.
The only thing one should be embarrassed by is he/she votes because of the “Democrat” / “Republican” label.
Oh here we go again with the name calling and senseless labelling of people. “anti-poor sentiments” (i.e. hating on the poor) and “hating on homeless” – I am not denying there are those that just wish for those problem to go away without thinking any more about it, but it’s also not untrue: They have to go away (the problems, not the homeless that is, although those two are intrinsically tied to each other)! How to go about it, now that’s the more tricky question, one we don’t have any good answers for (or the will to actually do something real about it), but it’s no good just sitting it out while opposing forces shout each other down. Too often I see conversations (even on Nextdoor) where the homeless problem is talked about in the context of what can be done including offering solutions, but the “you just hate the homeless” camp usually stops listening (if they even followed that far) somewhere in between “they should move” and “we have to provide good, safe alternative living conditions”. This constant, totally not constructive second grade behaviour is what furthers the divide. I’d really wish we stopped putting words in each other’s mouths.
Please show me where Davison is a Trump supporter by her own admission. I truly want to know, thank you so much in advance.
This sounds exactly like the kind of things Trump said when he lost. “It’s the media’s fault”.
Yeah, it’s a much closer race than earlier hot takes would have you think! I think the results make sense considering turnout by age. If young folks don’t want the 65+ crowd to dominate Seattle politics, we gotta stop letting them crush us in voter turnout. Anyway, here goes another four years of the same failed policies of the Durkan administration.
Young people could have changed local and national politics but sadly, not enough of them care to.
Voting isn’t the only thing you can do to effect change and sometimes the choices are so bad that apathy is warranted.
I don’t think it’s a close race at all… Harrell and Nelson are blowouts.
Davison beating NTK by 5% as a Republican in Seattle? That’s like a small political earthquake here. Sewant’s win is narrower than this.
It only didn’t feel so earth shattering because in this news cycle and election, Progressives lost spectacularly everywhere else:
– Virginia is gone for Democrats
– Defunding police defeated easily in Minnesota
– A trucker ran as Republican, spent $153 dollars and beat New Jersey State Senate President
– Moderate Democrat beating Socialist as a write-in candidate in Buffalo
Yet the “Squad” is still so unrealistically ideological they don’t care about blowing everything up and getting the POS elected again…which will be the end of democracy. Is anyone watching this?
The mayor does not run the city attorney’s office. Judges, not prosecutors, sentence. None of this has anything to do with Durkan.
Failed policies of the Durkan administration? As in the ones that the council blocked, or sometimes authored and then really became “city policy” i.e. Durkan’s doing? Come on …
BTW (@the author of the article), “And the rest of us ..” – really? The whole article smells a bit like the Trumpist whining after a lost election trying to look at a “reality” that isn’t there. Sure, late voters may be more in favour of the more moderate candidates, but that by no means that there is a majority there. What are you trying to say here? Overall turnout and votes count, end of story. Now let’s get going and do something productive (ideally together), whichever side of the aisle you’re on.
Folks, the goal is to win elections, not to lose by ten plus thousand votes.
The gaps are narrowing like everyone expected, but the blowout leads from the first night indicated we knew who won city-wide and — besides Mosqueda — it was not any of the lefty candidates.
Does the shift matter for outcomes? All of these votes are cast for the same election and count the same, regardless when they’re tallied. The data in that graphic shows Gonzalez narrowed her gap, but it doesn’t say that she is down by 45k votes. When these voters cast their ballots is not very relevant for the fate of progressives, imo.
Sure, there was a slightly larger left shift than some other recent elections, but isn’t the ability to overcome this shift plus the overall margins just evidence that moderates won decisively?
Which is quite different than the sentiments that Mark and CD Born n Raised have expressed here.
Well said. I actually surprised with the narrative of this article. We (progressives) lost, and we lost decisively. This is a time to reflect on what went wrong, to learn, and figure out what to change moving forward. This isn’t a time to feel like we should continue with more of the same if we want to win elections.
Whether you like it or not, the less progressive candidates did as well in this election as the progressive candidates did in 2019. I seem to recall progressives crowing about a mandate after that election, and Council has certainly governed since then as if they had one. If that election was a mandate, so is this one. The message is to temper your enthusiasm a bit, consider the less progressive Councilmembers’ opinions when legislating, and just try to conduct yourself in a more inclusive and less reactive manner. Noone expects a sea change, but I am hoping for a bit more practically from Council and the Mayor going forward.
And while I am at it, have Nikita Oliver or Nicole Thomas Kennedy congratulated their victorious opponents yet? I hope so, but I haven’t seen it, and they need to do so soon. Time to put the acrimony aside once the election is done and conduct yourself with courtesy. It is important for our election processes that losing candidates candidates acknowledge the results and their opponents.
I think you are expecting too much out of these people. They are not the Kennedys or Rockefellers, they are the Trump of the Left… Self-righteous, incompetent and delusional. That’s why they are suffering defeats everywhere in the country.
I think Nikita tweeted something like “we are not defeated” while NTK snarked and deleted a tweet on Ann Davison needing all the PAC money (insulting that Seattle voters don’t have ability to make up their own minds).
After comparing Davison, and all you folks with “in this house” signs, to a movie serial killer. Classy!
In reality this city, much like this country more broadly, is centrist. Of course at times it swings slightly between center left and center right.
The local media has recently been a lot like national media who did everything that they could to paint Biden as a center left Democratic but w him and his advisers going hard left we are seeing a repudiation of Biden and hard left politicians and their ideas across the country. There has been no shortage of articles and polls showing that the coming election will be more or the same for the Democrats yet they seem to be doubling down on the rhetoric and calling for swinging even harder left. Welp…. We’ll see how that works out.
Yup, to our detriment we will all see how that works out…what is truly maddening is how BOTH the extreme left and right seem to work on the idea that they both know what is best for everyone else. Which ironically is the antithesis of both the extreme left and right values…sort of.
I’d encourage everyone here flexing on what they know about the Seattle electorate to go out and knock some doors / make some calls in the next municipal election. I knocked a little over a thousand doors this cycle, and made easily that many calls and texts. What I learned from voters is that very few have stark centrist/leftist views, most of their opinions are pretty nuanced, actually. They might be the loudest online, but they actually make up a pretty small portion of the electorate. I’m disappointed in the results, but I do understand how we got here, I guess.
we don’t need more people knocking on doors.