Jenny Durkan established a comfortable lead over her opponent, Cary Moon in early election results released Tuesday evening. Final election results will not be certified until all of the ballots collected today are counted but The Seattle Times and KING 5 are calling the race for Durkan.
As of 8 p.m., Durkan had 61 percent of the vote to Moon’s 39 percent. But Moon isn’t throwing in the towel yet.
“Seattle voters may surprise everyone,” she said after initial results were released. “We believe ballot counts may swing in our direction, will swing in our direction, over the next few days and we are not out of this yet.”
Moon’s campaign foreshadowed this initial result in this statement this morning:
We expect tonight’s counts will show Moon behind Durkan, and then will tighten up over the days ahead. As today’s Seattle Times notes, election night counts are often dominated by older, more conservative voters and subsequent counts trend towards younger, more liberal voters. We’ve seen up to 10-point gains between election night and final certification in Seattle…We will be happy to see Moon at 39.5% or above tonight.
Durkan’s campaign donations far outpaced Moon’s in the historic Seattle mayoral race. The former U.S. attorney curried favor with many leaders in the tech community, including the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber’s Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE) committee contributed $525,000 to a group called People for Jenny Durkan. Amazon donated $350,000 over the last few months to CASE through a series of donations — marking the company’s biggest political funding effort ever in Washington state.
In the heavily funded 45th District race for Washington state Senate, Democrat Manka Dhingra had 55 percent of the vote as of 8 p.m. Earlier this evening, GeekWire reported on a suspicious social media propaganda effort targeting Dhingra.
Early results show Teresa Mosqueda pushing ahead of opponent Jon Grant with 62 percent of the vote for Seattle City Council Position 8, another closely watched race in this election. Tim Burgess previously held that seat before taking over as Mayor of Seattle in the wake of Ed Murray’s resignation.
The winners in Seattle’s races will be tasked with navigating the city through a pivotal moment in its history, balancing the booming technology industry’s interests with the progressive values that are emblematic of the city. It’s an issue we have been tracking in GeekWire’s Civic Affairs channel and our ongoing coverage of the Seattle mayoral race.
The full list of early results is available here.
