In a razor-tight race, Seattle’s socialist city council member Kshama Sawant beat off a recall attempt bankrolled by the city’s business interests. She won by just over two hundred votes in a race that went down to the wire. The outcome wasn’t determined until two days after the election, as mail-in ballots streamed in after election day. Six hundred ballots have been challenged and could still be counted, but they are not expected to change the recall’s outcome.

Sawant won largely based on a concerted effort to get out the youth vote. Among all demographics, the eighteen to twenty-five cohort was the only one which increased its turnout from the most recent election, held only one month earlier. Three hundred more voters in that age group voted in this election compared to last month, and those three hundred were largely the margin of victory. To indicate the level of interest in the race: last month’s general election turnout was 43 percent. Turnout for the Sawant recall — a single-candidate special election — was 53 percent.

Seattle’s capitalists have tried repeatedly to stamp out Sawant and her socialist politics from City Hall since her election in 2014. Repeatedly, they have failed.