SPOKANE, Wash — By the end of election night, candidate Lisa Brown was leading Spokane's mayoral race. She thanked voters who cast their ballots to give her an early lead.
"It looks very good that many of you have trusted me to be the next Mayor of Spokane," Brown said during the Spokane Democrats watch party.
At the same time, Mayor Nadine Woodward also remained hopeful she would continue to be the leader of Spokane.
"I believe we’re going to make up those ballots and I will be your next mayor,” Mayor Woodward shared during her elections watch party.
Despite being behind in numbers, political expert Dr. Cornell Clayton said there's time for votes to swing in anyone's favor.
"There are lots of votes that could determine the outcome and change the outcome as it appears on election night still out to be counted,” Dr. Clayton said.
Dr. Clayton is a political science professor at Washington State University and director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service.
He said there's some campaign psychology in how a candidate conducts themselves through an election.
"There's good reasons not to concede early because no one wants to have the problem of conceding, and then when the late ballots come in, going back and taking back your concession," Dr. Clayton said. "That puts you in a very awkward position."
He explained there are some factors that could lead to a potential influx of votes in Woodward's favor.
First, he explained how voters cast their ballots could determine how results roll in.
"Liberal or democratic leaning, voters tend to cluster in urban areas where there's more drop boxes and drop boxes are used more frequently by them,” Dr. Clayton said. ”More rural based voters who tend to skew republican and conservative, more often mail their ballots with a regular post.”
He also said there are voting trends between Democratic and Republican-identifying voters that can also influence results.
"There's some evidence to suggest that the former group is more likely to vote in off year elections and also because of differences in feelings of voter efficacy more likely to vote early than the latter group," Dr. Clayton said.
Over the last 50 years, only one mayor has been re-elected and served two terms in Spokane.
Dr. Clayton said being the incumbent might not have as much influence as much as it would on a congressional level.
"Mayoral candidates and city council candidates aren't as well-known names as members of Congress, for instance," Dr. Clayton said. "And so the incumbent advantages are less than they might otherwise be. And there's always a mood, especially when there's an economic concern in the electorate to vote against the party that's in power to vote against the incumbents.”
Time will eventually show if history is to repeat itself or if Spokane's next mayor will beat the odds.
Spokane county elections took a brief pause on processing ballots Wednesday following the discovery of a white, powdery substance being found in a mailed envelope.
Hours before polls closed Tuesday, city of Spokane voter turnout was 39.13%.
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