One of the more fascinating (and exciting!) story lines from yesterday's primary is the extraordinary performance of Socialist Alternative challenger Kshama Sawant, who hauled in 33 percent of the vote in a three-way race against four-term incumbent city council member Richard Conlin.

Sawant got 27,813 votes in the first ballot drop. That's more votes than incumbent mayor Mike McGinn (admittedly, in a nine-way), and just shy of the vote tally won by much ballyhooed establishmentarian challenger Albert Shen against allegedly vulnerable incumbent council member Mike O'Brien.

O'Brien, you might remember, was dismissed by the Seattle Times editorial board for having "strayed beyond the leftward boundary of the reasonable too many times." And yet Sawant, a proudly outspoken socialist, matched the performance of O'Brien's pro-business challenger, despite the fact that Shen outspent her by almost ten-to-one. Looks like that "boundary of the reasonable" may be a bit further to the left than the Seattle Times realizes.

For his part, Conlin is outpolling Sawant by a comfortable 13,000-plus votes, but he can't be pleased by his 49 percent showing. Conlin is still the strong favorite, but he's no longer a lock. And if Sawant can manage to raise enough money to get her populist message before enough voters, should could make the general election night very interesting.