Harrell holds a 54% to 46% lead over Wilson as of Wednesday’s count

Harrell claimed nearly 57% of the ballots counted on Wednesday — a stronger showing than his already powerful election night

When reporting on a mail-only election, it’s difficult to not make the daily results sound like a horse race. But here’s the deal: All these things we are counting? They have already happened.

Wednesday’s update by King County Elections has strengthened the Election Night lead held by Mayor Bruce Harrell with the incumbent now up to 53.8% of the vote over challenger Katie Wilson’s 45.7%. Meanwhile, 0.5% of ballots counted so far went with “Other.”

Wednesday’s totals may not inspire hope for Wilson supporters. Of the more than 20,000 new ballots added to the tally, a whopping 57% of them were marked for Harrell. The mayor’s strong early counts also come as his fellow moderate incumbents Seattle City Council president Sara Nelson and Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison have already been solidly counted out of the race.

Still, there are thousands of votes left to count.

Processed totals now stand around 27.5% in an election expected to reach a turnout of around 45%. 2021’s mayoral battle in Seattle, by the way, boosted turnout to 54.6%.

At predicted turnout, around 56% of remaining uncounted ballots will need to be marked for Wilson for the challenger to unseat the incumbent.

With Washington’s by-mail system, ballots will continue to be processed over coming days. In past races, progressive candidates have generally seen their tallies rise as the later ballots from younger, poorer, and more likely to rent voters are counted.

It typically isn’t until the third day’s count when the late ballots really assert themselves.

The pattern in 2019

In one of the most well known examples in Seattle’s recent electoral history, Kshama Sawant went from more than eight percentage points down on Election Night to a solid 4.13-percentage point win in her 2019 re-election battle. The first signs of that big shift came on the third day of counts with a near-60% day for Sawant as ballots picked up from the county’s drop boxes were counted in large numbers.

At the time, CHS called the Sawant turnaround an amazing “reversal of fortune.” It was — and it wasn’t. Those votes had already long been cast. King County Elections — and the rest of us — are just catching up with the results.

We’ll know soon if a similar reversal will be enough for Wilson in 2025.

King County elections will continue to update ballot counts daily around 4 PM.

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