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komonews.com
Wilson maintains likely insurmountable lead over Harrell in tight mayoral race

by KOMO News StaffWed, November 12, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Updated Wed, November 12, 2025 at 8:43 PM

SEATTLE — Katie Wilson has kept her lead over incumbent Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell as some of the final ballots are counted into the system, according to a Wednesday afternoon update from King County Elections. Wilson now holds 50.19 % of the vote (138,489 ballots), compared to Harrell’s 49.48% (136,513), a margin of 0.71% - or just 1,976 votes. Per King County Elections, the only ballots left to count after this update are likely the few remaining challenged ones and those that have been slower to trickle in through the mail. "We expect the 1400 or so accepted Seattle ballots to be in today’s count. After that, we’ll be down to whatever small numbers we receive through the mail with on-time postmarks and signature challenges that the voter cured," an official said.
Out of King County's registered 505,393 voters, only 279,525 ballots have been counted so far. With very few ballots left to count, this indicates only around 55% of residents cast their vote in this election. When speaking to KOMO News Senior Reporter Chris Daniels, Wilson told him that she believes she has won the mayoral race. Harrell had a lead of more than 10,000 votes on Nov. 8 and was ahead by eight points, but that advantage steadily shrank as Election Day ballot box returns were processed. Wilson cut the gap to 4,300 votes by Nov. 7 and has since closed it entirely, pulling ahead in what remains a razor-thin race.
KOMO News' Chris Daniels caught up with Wilson on Monday evening and spoke to her about her newfound lead in the polls. "I mean, this is a very familiar pattern in Seattle at this point," said Wilson. "I think we see progressive votes coming in late, younger votes coming in late. I think older people get their ballot in the mail, sit down at the kitchen table, and fill it out. Young people wait till the very last minute. So, we know from polling that younger people very heavily trend toward us in this race. And so I think we're seeing that effect."
A recount is triggered "if the difference between the candidates is less than one half of 1 percent and also less than 2,000 votes," and a manual recount is done if "the difference between the candidates or responses is less than one quarter of 1 percent and also less than 1,000 votes."
"She really did come out of nowhere when this race first started. I think the conventional wisdom, which I shared, was that the mayor was headed for a cake walk win," said longtime Seattle political consultant Sandeep Kaushik. But he says, the election results held a similar pattern to past Mayoral races. "In the last three mayoral races before this one, the shift from election night to the final vote in terms of the margin of victory was nine points, 10 points and 12 points. We're seeing the same pattern here, though, actually, in this race, it's actually a little bit less than the last three elections."

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