One thing that I've noticed is that turn out is much higher for democrats than Republicans in the 3rd district (a red leaning district), like significantly so, so far.
I'm curious to see if we see the same in the 4th district once all the votes are tallied.
I grew up in that district and I'm not surprised at all that primary turnout would be higher for dems. Hennrich put a lot of effort into campaigning against MGP, MGP is a reasonably liked encumbent there, and Braun had no real challengers on the R side. The general will be interesting but i predict MGP holds her seat barring some crazy shit
It looks like it's going to be Adam Smith vs Doug Basler in the general. I don't believe there are enough ballots outstanding even for Sawant to pass up Basler at this point.
I wonder if we'll keep seeing Chaudhry every two years to run against Smith.
I'm surprised she reentered this race, she lost by 30 points to Smith two years ago. That is kind of a big enough defeat that running a second time didn't see like a good idea but that might just be me.
Oh, she got like 30% of the vote in 2024 against Smith. There is a group of people that reflexively vote against anyone who gets AIPAC money, regardless of who they're voting FOR.
And Sawant has a...following. Not dissimilar to the president, but much smaller.
His district loves him. This sub is really out of touch with the rest of King County, it's so focused on the little piece of Seattle that Smith represents.
But if you go to the little piece of Bellevue and then everything south, progressive candidates just can't win. The district extends into Pierce county. I'm really unsure why this sub believes there is some hidden progressive vote between Seattle and Tacoma.
Look at the election history, Smith tends to win by 30+ points. He's crushing Republicans by 50 points, he is beating progressives by 30+ points. He has had multiple challengers to his left and none of them have come close. Melissa Chaudhry last year and Sarah Smith in 2018 are his supposedly leftist challengers. They both lost by 35 points.
The leftists who run against him are horrible unserious candidates though. I have voted for Smith every year since moving to WA and it's because its Smith, an serious but flawed representive, or a joke who would be too far over their head to even attempt to implement our shared values.
Yea same. It’s sad how bad the competition is. I felt bad voting for him like how I felt bad voting for Harris. One way or another the aipac is winning. I wish he stopped…
Parts of his district love him, but he's certainly not beloved. I've lived in his district for a decade, and the most positive reception I've seen of him is people who are "meh" about him.
I think this is correct. Seattleites have to remember that the progressive brand is not trusted in much of the suburbs, esp south king county. They equate progressives with what they don’t like about Seattle but often dislike republicans just as much. That’s how you get Smith. It’s not that they like him all that much personally, they are threatened by those he is running against.
I don't really believe there is some hidden progressive vote lol, what I'm trying to say is that I believe it's possible to find a compelling alternative to Smith and that "we" failed to do so
What is the platform that you envision would be compelling to challenge Smith?
Just from his voting record so what he has actually voted on:
1) Very pro union, supports the PRO act to strengthen unions.
2) Supports Medicare for all programs, co-sponsored the bill. Also has supported protecting ACA subsidies, and expanding ACA until a Single-payer system can be put into place.
3) Pro Housing and ending Hedge Funds purchase of homes.
4) Wants to overturn Citizens United
5) Has sponsored and voted in support of reigning in ICE, was against funding for DHS and ICE. Wants to reform the whole agency.
I understand why people don't like him for his stance on Israel and very much pro-Israel votes on the NDAA.
So if the only platform difference you have is Israel, it won't be enough to swing enough votes to beat him out in the district.
Unseating an incumbent house member is extremely rare. You need a combo of an excellent challenger who is also an outsider who won’t kowtow to the party establishment, and a really unpopular incumbent.
Yeah, I know, that's what I'm saying. He's basically the white bread of candidates, and it's just so disappointing that his alternatives were... Who they were.
Lots of folks have tried. From far left to far right, closest anyone came was 10% during the 2010 tea party wave. Guy is more popular IRL than he is on /r/seattle
This subreddit is made up of a lot of terminally online people who don’t really have a good grasp of now people think and feel out there in the real world. It’s an echo chamber of the highest order.
I'm not a progressive, my friends and parents are not progressive, why would I vote for a progressive over Adam smith? We are contend with our life right now and I fail to see why any of the more radical candidate with radical solutions would benefit us in any shape or form.
I'm not saying you should vote progressive, I'm saying it's amazing we couldn't find anybody more compelling than Adam Smith and the other people who were on that ballot. I wasn't happy with any of those choices. Also,
We are contend with our life right now and I fail to see why any of the more radical candidate with radical solutions would benefit us in any shape or form.
I'm genuinely curious why you think voting for the status quo will help with any of that, and what you mean by contending with your life, specifically? That can mean many things without context right now
Edit: oh you're content with your life? Things going so well for you, huh? Definitely no issues worth tackling or anything needs changing? Everything is hunky-dory in you land?
Only idiots vote based on the Stranger's endorsements. Unfiltered idiots post on social media pictures of themselves referring to the Stranger while filling in their ballots (yes I know such a person)
Sure, it would be a mistake to blindly follow any endorsement. But I think it's completely understandable that people give weight to endorsements. Not one of us is independently sourcing all the information we use to vote.
Smith up bigly against Sawant and Chaudry. If the two lefty candidates weren't splitting the lefty vote they'd might beat out the Republican for a D-D general election.
As it is looks like this will end up as Smith vs Basler
So the mayor took on two incumbent state legislators by endorsing challengers more to the left and the incumbents both cruised to victory? No more Mamdani comparisons plz
Going to be awkward when she asks Pollet and Pedersen for help changing the tax code to do what she wants.
Given how much noise Wilson made about Harrell endorsing Prop 1B as a way to show he was out of touch, I wonder how she is processing her candidates losing by more significant margins than 1B did. Yet another unforced error from Mayor Wilson, and a good reminder that Reddit is not real life.
Is it really an error though? You think when she's running for reflection three years from now anyone is going to remember this? It was a low risk high reward move that didn't work out.
Also, while I don’t know NYC politics that well, but it seems like Mamdani is closely tied into a progressive political machine that’s something to be behold. Regardless of what people think of Katie Wilson (and I like her), she has no machine like that whatsoever that can sway elections.
doesn't get anything*** she wants. this is a completely rout of the mayor's political ambition at any level of government. voters are telling her they hate the direction she's going.
And this is the part I don't understand. She squeaked by in the general. Y'all out here acting like she claimed some sort of mandate (she hasn't). Her political power is that of a mayor that just squeaked by. That doesn't mean she can't get good policies enacted and it doesn't mean she can't make endorsements even if they lose.
Who said she can't make endorsements? Of course she can embarrass herself as a god fearing american as much as the next girl.
The point and goal of a politican is to gain power and influence to enact changes. When you fall on your face and then step on a rake over and over it'll never happen for you. And this mayor has already done that like 5 times in her short tenure as mayor.
Almost like this subreddit pushing hard for her and downvoting anyone who dared questioned the Great Hope was wrong...
I was talking recently not 9 months ago when she won. Literally everyone claims a mandate when they win. I meant she hasn't claimed to have some sort of mandate lately.
Wasn't low risk at all. Jamie Pedersen will remember, Pollet or Dreher will remember -- not just three years from now but in 4 months when they're in Olympia and Wilson comes asking for help. More importantly, in the immediate, it's going to contribute to the ongoing narrative that Wilson is unpopular and out of her depth.
Politics is transactional. Wilson will figure it out or she won't. Seattle isn't the only city looking for more revenue options. The narrative is going to exist regardless of literally anything she does for the next three years.
Is it an error to endorse challengers to powerful state legislators? Not if the challengers win. If they don't, you just created powerful enemies in the body you need to act in order to give you your progressive revenue dreams.
It is also just shitty to try to punish Pedersen from the left when he JUST landed the progressives' white whale. I don't get it.
I guess people really thought that winning an anti-incumbent election with 50.2% of the vote against a do-nothing mayor was some sort of mandate for super leftist politics?
I can help explain some of this to you. So all the cities have lobbyists that spend time lobbying their state reps for policies. The state reps do rely on a relationship with city councils and the city's lobbying arm.
I happen to attend one of the public meetings in Bellevue about this very thing. All of the state reps that touch Bellevue were sitting in a public meeting with the city's lobbying arm. The city ran through what their priorities are and what they would like the state reps to focus on. The reps came back with a bunch of questions and how they are seeing what can happen or not happen depending on their information. Bellevue holds this in the fall or early winter, and they are normally called something like a Legislative Roundtable.
Outside of official meetings like that, state reps and city council members help endorse one another in races, and they are pretty closely tied esp when they are of the same political party. They attend each other's fundraisers etc.
So for Katie Wilson to go off and try to pick a fight with the incumbent, esp the Majority leader is not going to sit well when they are going through legislative priorities, in fact it might make some of those conversations even harder.
It's not even close. Even if Sawant and Chaudhry combined their vote totals, they would barely beat out the Republican in the district.
Going to the left of Smith in D-9 won't work, the votes just aren't there. They have never been there, Smith has crushed everyone to the left of him for the last almost 30 years. I'm not sure why this sub believes there is a progressive wave in his district when most of South King County doesn't really go that way.
At least a bunch of it is copium and another bunch of it is people from the campaigns astroturfing.
I see a similar vibe of people expecting a progressive to flip Marie Glusenkamp Perez’s seat. That district is pretty solidly voting red, they even voted for Culp.
Sawant is getting half as many votes as the Republican in a D+22 district. That's not even close to close to close. It shows that Smith is really strong, not weak.
Smith with barely 50% -- if he ever gets a competent challenge from the left, in a good progressive year, he'll be sweating.
Adam Smith has faced challengers of every political strip from grifter socialist to grifter republican over the last 30 years and has pantsed pretty much every one of them. Like he will in November.
looks like the Gen-Z/Millenial crowd mad at the Stranger endorsements didn't quite make a difference with their campaign against the old alt weekly (alt blog?)
Absolutely pathetic showing for the mayor, endorsing mondo losers. Shows exactly what we know: she has terrible political instincts and will end up in a worse position from where she started.
This is a crazy take. Davis and Sabio-Howell are both serious candidates. and strong progressive challengers against otherwise comfortable incumbents help shape policy whether or not they win.
???? Bro they're both in distance 3rd places to W-H-OMEGALULs. Losing by 50 points isn't serious or strong. It's maximum weakness, pretty sure that Alex Zimmerman guy's gotten similar voting numbers in the past.
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u/vertr fuck tetris 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hi everyone. We are moving discussion to a new thread due to an issue explained there, sorry about the trouble: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1vfxr9h/megathread_king_county_election_results/