By Andrew Hong special for CHS
This map shows the voteshares comparing only the top two candidates — and illustrates that District 3’s political divides were muddled in August 2023
While the 2023 Seattle City Council primary mirrored familiar polarized voting trends seen in Seattle — and national — politics, there was actually signs of depolarization in District 3 in August’s vote compared to the same election in 2019. In fact there was a strong correlation between precincts that went to progressive Kshama Sawant in 2019, and precincts that shifted away from the more progressive candidate in the race in 2023.
In the 2023 August primary election for Seattle City Council District 3, Joy Hollingsworth and Alex Hudson clearly prevailed as the two winners advancing to the general election to succeed Councilmember Sawant. The two winners were endorsed by The Seattle Times and The Stranger, respectively, which have become standard bearers of the centrist and progressive political lanes and primary election winners in Seattle politics.
Here is a look at how that vote fell across the district, block by block.
District 3 has a reputation for siding with progressive-endorsed candidates, with socialist incumbent Kshama Sawant winning 3 (4 if you count the recall) elections in District 3 and citywide candidates routinely performing best in District 3 out of the 7 council districts.
However, centrist pick Joy Hollingsworth edged out Hudson in this August primary. Relative to historic city voting trends, Hollingsworth did exceptionally better than other centrists in every other district compared to historic voting trends in each district. She built her narrow victory by expanding the typical centrist coalition in District 3, particularly to include voters in the predominantly-POC Central District. Here we’ll dive deeper into the coalitions that formed to come to these results.
Hollingsworth or Hudson won every precinct except for one near First Hill with less than 20 votes. Their geographic centers of support mirror typical District 3 polarized voting patterns. The base of progressive Hudson’s votes came from more diverse, renter-heavy neighborhoods in Capitol Hill and the Central District. Meanwhile the more moderate Hollingsworth performed best in whiter, wealthier waterfront neighborhoods like Broadmoor and Leschi. Indeed there was a strong positive correlation between how many renters and how many people of color are with how much a precinct supported Hudson.
The 2019 voteshares map
While the district remains polarized by these familiar lines, the divide softened in 2023 from previous years.
Compared to 2019, Hudson outperformed the leading 2019 progressive Kshama Sawant in traditionally centrist areas like Madison Park and Montlake, while Hudson underperformed Sawant’s massive margins in Capitol Hill and the Central District.
Conversely, Hollingsworth gained the most support from centrist Egan Orion’s 2019 margins in the Central District. Hollingsworth gained much more support over Orion than Hudson did over Sawant, showcasing Sawant’s organizing prowess and Hollingsworth’s candidate strength (she has more inroads in the historically Black Central District and got the 37th Democrats endorsement, whereas Orion did not in 2019).
Interestingly, both Hollingsworth and Hudson gained significant support over their 2019 counterparts in Madison Park, one of the wealthiest areas in District 3.
Overall, though, the district has depolarized since 2019, with progressive Hudson gaining ground in wealthier waterfront neighborhoods and moderate Hollingsworth making inroads in the Central District. Indeed, there was a correlation between how Black a precinct is and how much support Hudson lost from Sawant, with the most Black precincts representing the biggest drop in Hudson support from Sawant’s 2019 numbers. Conversely, there was a positive association with how white a precinct is and how much more support Hudson received over Sawant four years ago.
The top two candidates to emerge in 2023 are strong. Only challenger Bobby Goodwin managed to get more than 10% of the vote for a surprising third place finish. In 2019, the top two candidates got a combined vote share of less than 60% whereas the 2023 top two got over nearly 75%. CORRECTION: This analysis mistakenly reported that no other 2023 candidate received more than 5% of the vote. Goodwin received 10.5%. We have updated the post.
The difference is due in part to endorsers—elected officials, the Democratic Party, labor, and newspapers—endorsing a wider range of candidates in 2019 whereas Hollingsworth and Hudson racked up most of the major endorsements in 2023. Additionally, multiple 2019 candidates were familiar names—Pat Murakami ran for council in 2017, Zachary DeWolf was a sitting school board member, Kshama Sawant was the incumbent—whereas nearly everyone was a first-time candidate in 2023.
Turnout patterns mirrored the progressive-moderate political divide well, with turnout higher in precincts that performed well for Hollingsworth and lower in Hudson-favorable precincts. Turnout was lowest in the Central District and highest around Leschi and Montlake.
One new factor in this year’s city council contest is that the district was different from the previous District 3 city council seats. Redistricting after the 2020 Census altered the district since 2019. Eastlake was added while bits of the Central District and South Lake Union were removed during redistricting. This had an overall conservative impact on District 3, with Sawant performing well in SLU and removed parts of the Central District and Hollingsworth holding her own in Eastlake.
Overall, the District 3 primary mirrors patterns we’ve seen recently in polarized Seattle politics with the centrist Joy Hollingsworth excelling in whiter waterfront areas and the progressive Alex Hudson gaining her edge in the Central District and Capitol Hill. However, the traditional geographic and demographic polarization in District 3 softened since 2019’s top two candidates Sawant and Orion. Hudson and Hollingsworth were neck-and-neck ahead of the rest of the candidates after all votes were counted, and will make for a very close race in the general election.
Andrew Hong is a data science student at Stanford University and lifelong South End resident. He has worked as a campaign consultant, community organizer, and currently serves as statewide coordinator of Redistricting Justice for Washington, a coalition from the Washington Community Alliance advocating fair redistricting for Communities of Color across Washington State.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
This is a knock on Hollingsworth to me. That demographic was vehemently anti-Sawant and pro grifters like Orion and the weirdo Recall faction. I may now lean Hudson.
Hudson seems more of the political class. policy shaped by ideology that got us into the mess were in. we need people from the community who know the community in city hall.
Egan Orion is a 30 year community organizer for Capitol Hill. Calling him a grifter is ridiculous. He has done more – gratis – work for Capitol Hill than that ridiculous Socialist ever did.
The author mentions that no other D3 candidate received more than 5 percent of the vote in 2023. Maybe I misunderstood something there, but didn’t Bobby Goodwin receive almost ten percent of the vote? Also, please stop calling Joy Hollingsworth a “centrist.” That is a ridiculous characterization of her political positions. She is a progressive by almost any definition, although perhaps not as progressive as Alex Hudson. In other words, stop trying to polarize this election.
Thanks. We have corrected the post. As for “centrist,” we go to lengths to draw the distinctions fairly, describing the candidates as more centrist or more progressive, etc. Thanks for reading.
Centerist is very fair
By Seattle’s skewed ultra leftist / indigo Blue standards, Hollingsworth is a Centrist. She owns property. She supports funding SPD. She is grounded in reality and not Socialist ideology.
Great study. I used to do a lot of demographic election analysis for campaigns and admire the work that went into this. A question – what is the meaning of totally white areas on the maps?
another great article, well written and detailed. a lot of the voting patterns are based on endorsements, not so much policy. the two are identical except when it comes to public safety. Hudson said she was for defund and Hollingsworth is not.
this race is going to be about public safety and Hollingsworth understands the issue much better.
Anyone “progressive” is already out for me from voting for in this election. They changed the meaning of this a very special word to something I’ll never agree with. Total anarchy, extreme ideology and obsession with race and provoking division, hatred and violence. They are a danger to society and the reasons for a rise in criminal activities and drop in safety for those, living in Seattle and, especially, in Capitol Hill. I, honestly, don’t see any strong candidates in the district, but hoping for no more, so called, “progressive”.
I totally agree. After identifying as a progressive for most of my adult life, it has become a negative in my book. It now stands for ideology over reality, divisive identity politics over the common good, performance over practicality, and magical thinking over common sense. They lost me on drug policy, homeless policy, and public safety. It makes me sick what they have done to a once beautiful city by centering our society around the agency of drug addicts to destroy themselves and the public realm. Public fentanyl use should be stigmatized and illegal. I want to live in a civil society, not a failed dystopian social experiment.