The final margin will be around 2,017 votes but — especially in our new era of highly optimized political campaigns driven by data and block by block analysis — a win is a win.
With King County Elections set Tuesday to certify the results of Mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s November victory in Seattle, here is a look at how the political battle played out in maps of Seattle and the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill and the Central District.
We also have a few maps showing the borders for the month’s other progressive victories including a few neighbor vs. neighbor political battlefronts.
This summer as we examined mapping of the August primary, CHS asked, “Who didn’t vote for Katie Wilson on Capitol Hill?” after the Capitol Hill renter’s impressive showing in the neighborhood helped drive an even more impressive top showing in the primary.
Today, as the mayor-elect is forming her transition team, laying out first priorities around homelessness, and preparing to work with an also-new city council, Wilson is preparing to take office in a city where the mayoral vote seemed to split across precincts by lines that delineate differences around wealth, ownership, and equity. Her summer trend held on in November but the Capitol Hill and Central District border skirmishes with incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell supporters made for a less decisive victory in Wilson’s home area in November.

Looking closely at the results precinct by precinct shows where the incumbent Harrell successfully maintained and grew his strength in the city’s wealthier waterfront ring while also doing well with voters in the city’s more single family-home dominated neighborhoods. Harrell flipped many border precincts including a handful in areas of Capitol Hill near Miller Park and Madrona while also wiping out an island of Wilson-majority support in Montlake.
Wilson, meanwhile, held onto much of her core primary-won territory in the most densely populated areas of Capitol Hill and the Central District while also centering her win around precincts mostly dominated by recent multifamily development.
In a change that might also add evidence to those crediting young voters with Wilson’s ability to hold off Harrell, Wilson was able to turn the precinct covering the Seattle University campus to her majority after the area went Harrell’s way over the summer. Let the debate commence.
MAPPING THE OTHER PROGRESSIVE WINS
Meanwhile, the city’s other progressive victories in November including nonprofit executive and former community organizer and policy advisor Dionne Foster’s defeat, above, of Council President Sara Nelson and the win, below, for former federal prosecutor Erika Evans over incumbent Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison mostly show more clear delineations of Seattle’s classic political borders that ebb and flow from year to year.
The exception is Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s landslide victory, below, for the Position 8 citywide seat. As you can see, her challenger Rachael Savage, a Republican and owner of Broadway crystal shop The Vajra, almost walked away without winning a single precinct. She is now the mayor of Broadmoor.
At the county level, mapping the battle for the King County Executive’s office shows how Girmay Zahilay big wins in the city was enough to win the day for “the first millennial, immigrant, or refugee” to fill the office.
You can zoom in and explore the maps here thanks to the Washington Community Alliance.
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The coastal wealthy gets their panties in a wad if they hear that we are going to elect someone who protects workers, renters, and impoverished. No surprise here.
You could set a watch to these maps, and even if we’re in a city together, people on the shores act the least like it.