The latest results from King County Elections have been posted and it looks like the race for Mayor is going to down to the wire. Joe Mallahan has slowly gained on Mike McGinn’s 910-vote margin last night to a narrow 462 vote lead today.
Mayor of Seattle
Mike McGinn – 52,238 – 49.77%
Joe Mallahan – 51,776 – 49.33%
According a campaign staffer in the McGinn camp, the last minute attempt to get out final votes netted an additional 203 ballots. That could prove crucial in a tight race that may end up heading to an automatic recount. King County will release the next round of results tomorrow at 4:30pm.
Today’s results have effectively finalized some results: Tim Eyman’s I-1033 has failed statewide and Constantine has defeated Hutchison for King County Executive. On the Seattle City Council: Conlin will hold on to his seat against a challenge from Ginsberg; Bagshaw has defeated Bloom; Licata has defeated Israel; and O’Brien has defeated Rosencrantz. With the small exception of Nick Licata, Seattle Transit Blog had endorsed these very results. The results from Bellevue, on the other hand, are just as disappointing for transit advocates as last night’s results were.
If you’d like to track your mail-in ballot and make sure your vote was counted, check out this useful widget on the King County Elections website.
Most news outlets have called it for Constantine, no for 1033, and most of all the Seattle council races.
But wow! We knew it was going to be close, but I didn’t think it was going to come this close. At this point, I don’t see any purpose in following the updated results tally for at least another week.
Looks just like the primary.
Mallahan gained on McGinn the first day after voting, and then McGinn gained it right back on the second day.
Really? Do you know if the county has day by day records of the primary?
I’m sure the WA Sec/State has those records but it’s pretty much common knowledge and a search of the daily “newspaper” accounts would confirm it.
Okay. I didn’t know that. The primary occurred 4 days after I moved to Stockholm so I wasn’t paying much attention to Seattle at the time.
Does anyone know the order in which they count ballots? They must have start counting yesterday morning meaning the first days vote tally would have been about 2/3s comprised of people that mailed in their ballots early. It’s far too close to really call trends but this would seem to indicate the later voters are moving slightly toward Mallahan and that this is going to get even closer. It may well be determined by true absentee ballots. I wonder if anyone has any polling data on how voters living away from home are trending? Military I’d guess might lean Mallahan but it seems the clear favorite with the college crowd would have to be McGinn. Indeed, it is shaping up just like the primary!
I did a very simple and meaningless extrapolation from today’s results. If Mallahan can perform like he did today, he’ll narrowly win. But real life doesn’t work from extrapolations and we have no idea what the exact turnout will be. Just some fun with math.
Today: 52238 (mc) + 51776 (ma) = 104014
Yesterday: 42563 (mc) + 41653 (ma) = 84216
109874 ballots total (95.52% actually vote for mayor)
52238 – 42563 = 9675 (new mcginn)
51776 – 41653 = 10123 (new mallahan)
/ 19798 (new votes for mayoral candidate = 104014 – 84216)
0.48868572583089200929386806748156 (mcginn trend)
0.51131427416910799070613193251844 (mallahan trend)
~100,000 votes remaining (so says Publicola) * 95.52% who vote for mayor = 95520 votes for mayor left
95520 * 0.48868572583089200929386806748156 = 46679 (mcginn extrapolation)
95520 * 0.51131427416910799070613193251844 = 48841 (mallahan extrapolation)
46679 + 52238 = 98917 / 199534 = 49.6% (mcginn extrapolated total)
48841 + 51776 = 100617 / 199534 = 50.4% (mallahan extrapolated total)
100617 – 98917 = extrapolation mallahan wins by 1,700 votes.
As long as we’re doing pointless extrapolation, in reverse it’s McGinn over Mallahan 50.66% to 49.34%.
This is fun! This whole race has been great drama and the cliffhanger ending couldn’t have been better scripted. The vote distribution of the remaining ballots would have to fall 50.2% to 49.8% in favor of Mallahan to have this decided by a coin toss… Which happens to be the exact distribution of the votes counted today!
King County hasn’t received the ballots from our household yet. They were dropped off at Union Station on Election Day.
Mine dropped off at Central Neighborhood Service Center also hasn’t been counted.
Mine’s received but not yet counted.
Nor has mine, my signature didn’t match, so it won’t be counted for a few days yet.
The Seattle Sometimes has a piece on I-1033 placement on the ballot:
Thousands of King County voters apparently missed I-1033 on the ballot
Take home message, “if R-71 had been in the spot where I-1033 appeared, the story could be different, Barretto said, because the R-71 contest is much closer and King County is offsetting the no vote elsewhere in the state.”
So we should all thank Tim Eyman for R-71 passing?
This will be far more fun to watch with 1033 and Hutchinson so soundly defeated. If those were close I might be suicidal.
If McGinn wins by less than 200 votes he’s going to look like a freaking genius.
The guy’s no slouch.
A race close enough that there are exactly two candidates and neither has 50%.