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Posts published in “Day: July 20, 2009”

The non-contest

Joel Connelly's review (in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) of the progress of the Seattle mayor contest is . . . there isn't much. The polling seems to be pretty consistent: The voters don't really think much of two-term incumbent Greg Nickels, but then they don't have a lot of use for any of his challengers, either. All their numbers are low, and no one has budged.

From the Survey USA polling summary (conducted last Thursday):

Today, Nickels takes 26% of the vote, up 2 points from an identical SurveyUSA poll released three weeks ago.
City Council member Jan Drago takes 15%, down 1 point.
Former Seattle Sonic James Donaldson takes 11% today, down from 14%.
Businessman Joe Mallahan takes 8%, up 1 point.
Community organizer Mike McGinn also takes 8%, unchanged from the previous poll.
Three other candidates combine to take 6% of the vote. 1 of 4 likely voters are undecided today, 13 days before ballots begin to be mailed in the all-mail primary.

So it looks like the predictable, Nickels v. Drago, predictable since a sole incumbent council member ordinarily will have an edge toward making the runoff (er, general).

All of which, in general, may give some comfort to Nickels, in that things are playing out conventionally, and none of his opposition really seems to have much traction. On the other hand, elections are mostly about incumbents more than they are challengers, and an incumbent falling far short of 50% in a multi-candidate gang run - if that turns out to be the case - could be in big trouble in November.