The Wilson campaign held its Election Night event at El Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill (Image: CHS)
Mayoral challenger Katie Wilson claimed the lion’s share Friday as more than 56,000 Seattle ballots from mostly later-voters were counted.
Another day like this in Monday’s count will turn the city’s mayor’s race upside down.
Mayor Bruce Harrell now holds only a dwindling 1.9-point lead in the race. On Election Night, the centrist incumbent who campaigned on his long experience serving the city and support from national Democratic leaders led by seven percentage points.
The campaign for Wilson, the progressive organizer and leader at the Transit Riders Union who has helped lead minimum wage and renter rights campaigns around the region, has expressed confidence that later ballots would swing their way.
CHS reported on Day Three of the counting on the precedent set in past elections including D3 rep Kshama Sawant who went from more than eight percentage points down on Election Night to a solid 4.13-percentage point win in her re-election battle in 2019.
Following warnings of possible mail delays due to new USPS policies, the county is dealing with what appears to be an unprecedented level of ballots from its drop boxes. According to King County Elections, about 69% of the 2025 General Election ballots from the city’s voters were dropped in a box — not mailed — leaving officials to deal with more than 190,000 drop-box ballots. In the 2021 election the last time the Seattle mayor’s office was up for grabs, the county reported 59% of the ballots were collected from drop boxes.
Friday also brought a victory in another important election battle. In the race to replace Dow Constantine as King County Executive, Girmay Zahilay will become “the first millennial, immigrant, or refugee” to hold the position after Eastside King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci conceded headed into the weekend. Zahilay has represented Capitol Hill, the Central District, and nearby neighborhoods from the University District to Skyway on the King County Council since 2020. He is the brother-in-law of District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth.
For the Seattle mayor’s race, meanwhile, King County Elections reports around another 57,000 ballots left to count.
Officials said the next update would come Monday.
CHS asked elections officials about the county’s process of releasing vote counts piecemeal following Election Night instead of waiting until more significant and definitive totals have been counted. For now, don’t expect changes anytime soon.
“First, it’s what our voters and jurisdictions expect,” a spokesperson tells CHS. We’ll have more from the county about the reporting process soon.
The incumbent strikes back: Harrell leads on Election Night as Wilson’s hope lies in later voters
Election 2025 — Day 2: Harrell lead solidifies as Wilson’s math becomes clear
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The Seattle Times reported this afternoon (Friday 11/7 just before 4pm) only about 45K votes left to count. That’s a big difference from your number, 57K. Any idea why the discrepancy?
ST: “King County Elections estimates there are around 45,000 remaining Seattle ballots. Many of those will be counted Monday, with the full tally stretching further into next week.”
Our numbers are based on comparisons of the ballots tallied so far vs. the ballot return statistics reported by the county
Thank you!
I’d checked the elections website for that info before initially commenting, but the election data interface doesn’t work in my phone’s browser so thanks for clearing that up! Washington’s websites always seem to be more of a challenge UE-wise than they should.
The USPS story is more confusing. Seems like the election team had enough advance notice to have a more accurate ballot count earlier—a simple count from the ballot boxes. The way that number has significantly changed over the days seems weird. How did they miss gauging tens of thousands of ballots?
Do you account for the percentage of voters who do not vote in that race or write somebody else in?
On https://results.vote.wa.gov/results/20251104/king/ the “Estimated ballots left to count” currently says 115,000. “Last updated on 11/07/2025 3:39 PM”.
I don’t know the basis or timing of the other information in the press. My logical conclusion is that the official source website is accurate as far as the current estimate, And it likely indicates that additional ballots were received in the mail and from those deposited in dropboxes by the deadline.
Perhaps prior estimates did not take into account an unexpected surge in voting closer to the deadline. Regardless, the word estimate is used in all of these numbers and we’ll see how it turns out.
It’s likely that a larger number of ballots left to count would be favorable to Wilson based on the trend. Time for patience.
That’s the number of votes left in the whole county, not just Seattle.
Oh right. Wishful thinking.
Another reason it’s hard to estimate is that you can drop your ballot at any drop box in the State, for instance I dropped my ballot in Sammamish, but I’m a Seattle resident, I’m probably not on any Seattle estimate for votes remaining to be counted.
Somehow, I don’t think five people on horseback could actually take Seattle. They would be outnumbered by the residents. 800,000+ to 5.
honestly, yeah. i was really unhappy with both options. katie’s got a lot of ideas I really can appreciate but I have zero faith on her ability to follow through. buce’s ENTIRE campaign has been “hey i need more time to do the stuff I said i was gonna do before” which is a pretty bad argument when you just like….take a look at the city as it is right now. and when he wasn’t saying that, he was just bashing katie endlessly instead of, i dunno, paying attention to the things voters are responding to with her and considering how to actually integrate those into his own platform.
i voted for one of them but am not even telling people which one because there’s a 50/50 chance they’ll get pissed off but like….I very genuinely do not believe either is going to be able to make any real difference in the direction this city has been going, affordability-wise and otherwise.
Bruce failed upward I do not care about his resume of sufficiently bending the knee for corporate donors