On November 5, Seattle held non-partisan elections for city council. All seats are at-large, and candidates file for particular numbered seats. In seat two, Kshama Sawant polled 49,363 votes in unofficial returns. Her only opponent, Democratic incumbent Richard Conlin, polled 55,543. These are not final returns, although it is not likely the final returns will produce a very different outcome. Sawant is a professor who represents Socialist Alternative. See this story about the race, which was written before many votes had been counted.
You presumably mean that it is unlikely that there will be a very different outcome based on later returns.
Why is it likely there will be a different outcome?
I accidentally omitted the word “not” when I wrote the post. It has now been fixed.
It is not totally out of the realm of possibility that Sawant could win. She gained about 800 votes from 13,000 votes counted.
There may be about 80,000 ballots uncounted. Washington counts ballots that are postmarked by election day – so presumably almost all have been received by Thursday.
There appear to be about 12,000 vote dropoff from the mayor’s race, but about 5,000 more votes than in that council races, which were not particularly close. It is possible that Sawant attracted votes from persons who really didn’t know who to vote for, and voted late.
Incidentally, Seattle overwhelmingly approved district elections for its city council (or a mixed system with 7 district councilors and 2 elected at large).
The King County Board of Elections has updated the vote count in the Sawant-Conlin Seattle City Council race as of November 12th at 4:30pm Pacific Time. Sawant now has a lead of 41 votes! It’s Sawant 79,751 and Conlin 79,710. It would appear there are 10-15,000 votes still to count and record. The trend has been in favor of Sawant ever since election day. All subsequent vote counts have given Sawant an advantage. There is an automatic vote recount in races that are this close, so it may not be settled for another week or more. But there will be a further update Wednesday the 13th at 4:30pm Pacific Time.