Seattle’s November election for Mayor and City Council Position 9 are going to be very close.

King County Elections will drop more ballot results around 4:30 p.m. every weekday until they are all counted. Because later votes in Seattle tend to skew younger and more progressive, the final tally will likely bring both primary results much closer as more ballots are counted over the next week or so. So Tuesday’s count is probably as good as it gets for leading candidates Bruce Harrell and Sara Nelson. If past patterns hold true, Lorena González and Nikkita Oliver will close the gaps in their races to within a few percentage points.

Perhaps the most important data point won’t be the final vote leads themselves but voter turnout. As of Tuesday’s count, turnout was only 18%. That number will climb as more ballots are counted, but will it reach previous mayoral years? Turnout in 2017 was 19% on election night but grew to 41%, a high level that was likely a response to Trump’s election. But if turnout this year can’t even reach the 35% turnout in the 2013 mayoral primary, that’s probably not a good sign for the more progressive candidates. Older and more conservative voters vote earlier and more reliably, so a bigger turnout usually means more young people and a more progressive outcome.

One thing is almost certain: Teresa Mosqueda will keep her City Council seat. She had an overwhelming lead on election night of 55% that will likely grow further. Her leading opponent Kenneth Wilson, who owns a structural engineering firm that worked on the Northgate bike/walk bridge, is a far distant second with 18%. You can see updated results on the King County Elections website.

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The primary election is tomorrow (August 3), and turnout in King County was sitting at a mere 13% as of Friday evening. That’s too low.

But you are a Seattle Bike Blog reader, so you are engaged and vote in every election already (you do, right?). So what we really need is for you to personally contact friends and family members to make sure they vote, too. And if they say something like, “Oh, I don’t know where my ballot is,” tell them they can still vote.

It’s not even too late to register. Just head to a voting center (including Lumen Field in Seattle) during open hours (King, Snohomish, Pierce). You can register and vote at the same time. You can also simply head to a voting center if you didn’t get your ballot and don’t feel like navigating the elections website to figure out how to print a replacement.

If you do have your ballot sitting around the house, don’t let it go to waste! Summer primaries have a way of sneaking up on people. But it’s a short ballot without many difficult decisions. There are a lot of really great people running for very important offices, and this is our chance to make sure the best possible slate of candidates are on the November general election ballot. Low-turnout elections tend to over-represent conservative voters, and your vote could easily be the one that decides who gets the second spot on the ballot. That’s a big deal.

And hey, biking to a drop box is a great excuse for a ride.