Girmay Zahilay and Claudia Balducci are tied in the 2025 contest for King County Executive, with many voters still

undecided

This race could go either way.

That’s the takeaway from our autumn 2025 Civic Heartbeat survey of the King County electorate, which found Executive hopefuls Girmay Zahilay and Claudia Balducci running about even in their respective campaigns for the county’s top job, which was held by Dow Constantine from November of 2009 until March of this year.

Asked who they were voting for over the past few days, a representative sample of six hundred likely November 2025 King County voters was split between the two King County Councilmembers. In the aggregate, 37% said they had or would be voting for Claudia Balducci, while 35% said they had or would be voting for Girmay Zahilay.

Another 28% said they were not sure.

This is one of the closest results that we’ve ever seen in our polling, surpassed only by the incredibly tight rematch in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District last cycle between Democratic Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Joe Kent, and comparable to our 2022 general election finding for King County Prosecuting Attorney. Our data suggests that each candidate has a path to victory in the final six days.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/10/girmay-zahilay-and-claudia-balducci-are-tied-in-the-2025-contest-for-king-county-executive-with-many-voters-still-undecided.html