The good news for mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie is that a new poll shows him 18 points ahead of London Breed in a head-to-head matchup. The bad news for him is that Breed’s still ahead by five points if you count all candidates, though ranked choice favors Lurie.

Last we checked on SF Mayor London Breed’s approval numbers, it was eight months ago, and Breed was at an awful 36% approval rating with 60% disapproval. Folks, it has only gotten worse. A new poll conducted in January has her job approval now down to 29%, with a 63% disapproval rating. But more troublingly for Breed, that poll is for November’s mayoral election, and it shows Levi Strauss heir and nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie beating Breed by 18 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup (46%-28%).

But remember, San Francisco does not have head-to-head matchups in our elections, we have ranked choice voting. And that creates a far more complicated picture.

For instance, when one counts all four declared candidates (plus the undeclared maybe-candidate former supervisor Mark Farrell), Breed is still on top with 26% of the vote. Lurie is just behind at 21%, Farrell is at 15%, and Supervisor Ahsha Safai comes in with 10%. A full 28% of voters are undecided.

But that doesn’t take ranked choice voting into account either. And according to the poll, the ranked choice numbers look very good for Lurie.

“Lurie also wins a plurality of second choice votes, giving him 40% of first and second place votes compares to 34 for Breed, which puts him in prime position to win the Ranked Choice voting contest in November,” the poll’s analysis says.

Politico points out an important detail — it’s an internal Lurie poll, which is to say, Lurie’s campaign paid for it. But that said, David Binder Research is a highly respected polling organization with a national profile. And the poll does not offer a true ranked-choice analysis; ranked choice gives us a first, second, and third choice of candidates, the poll only measured first and second choices.

But still, the poll was good enough for Lurie that his campaign blasted it out to reporters all over the city. And ten months from the election, Lurie is likely in the best spot of any candidate in the mayoral race.

Related: Daniel Lurie Makes Candidacy Official For SF Mayor, Says There's 'Hunger For Change' [SFist]

Images: (Left) DanielLurie.com, (Right) @LondonBreed via Twitter

A poll commissioned by a local business group contends that 70% of the Bay Area wants to see the homeless population forced into conservatorships (or something) if they won’t take shelter, and claims their results should be seen as “a screaming wake-up call.”

We don’t actually know with any certainty whether the homeless population in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area has significantly increased during the pandemic, because we have delayed the biennial “homeless census” point-in-time count a year because of the pandemic. (It was last conducted in 2019, we expect to have this year’s results in June or July.) Angry anecdotal accounts on Twitter insist the issue is worse than ever, as they have for years, but the city has made magnificent strides in acquiring shelter properties, so it will be interesting to see how the numbers pan out.

But now a gaggle of CEOs and business interests just released a new poll on the matter. The San Francisco Business Times reports that the poll claims 86% of the Bay Area thinks that homelessness has gotten worse in what the poll defines as the “last couple of years,” and 70% feel that that “it’s “time to get tough on the unsheltered who refuse shelter and treatment.”

“This is not about villainizing homeless, this is about treating the awful human suffering and misery on our streets and sidewalks with the urgency it deserves,” said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, who commissioned the poll. "These poll results should be a screaming wake-up call to our state and local leaders that the status quo is simply unacceptable. We need to get outside our comfort zone, break down institutional and bureaucratic barriers and be willing to try bold approaches that may not make everyone happy.”

Who exactly is this Bay Area Council, who commissioned the poll? Their membership shows a roster of recognizable CEO names (including the president and publisher of the San Francisco Business Times itself, plus Examiner owner Clint Reilly). Their executive committee also includes 49ers CEO Jed York, Giants CEO Larry Baer, and real estate magnates like the CEO of Shorenstein Properties.  

And boy does this group like to put out polls, which all seem to confirm the hell-in-a-handbasket narrative. Back in 2016, they put out a poll saying that one-third of the Bay Area was "likely to move out of the Bay Area in the next few years." Well, here it is a few years later, and the Bay Area population is slightly larger, despite some degree of possibly temporary pandemic exodus.

And we are not saying this is a bogus poll, but the pollster asked a kind of a leading question of 1,000 Bay Area residents that seems designed to produce a specific result. Respondents were asked to choose between “It is time to get tough on the unsheltered who refuse shelter and treatment,” and “Just like anyone else, the unsheltered have a right to live however they choose.”

That framing ignores the reality that we don't have the shelter beds to shelter everyone, and we actually have lengthy waiting lists for those beds. And this is the same Bay Area Council that put out a poll last week saying 65% of Bay Area residents were avoiding going into downtown areas because of crime. There are perceptions that San Francisco is getting worse in every imaginable way, but ironically, it could be our captains of industry driving some of those perceptions.

Related: Another Poll Finds A Lot of People Who Claim They'll Leave San Francisco In a Few Years [SFist

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Oh my god, shut up. I know, multiple studies say that sugar is bad for you, and 48-year-old Halle Berry attributes her glowing good looks to a sugarless life. That's great. But it's almost Halloween, which means it's junk food time, and like Evillene in The Wiz, I have absolutely no interest in bad candy news...like a report today that California's favorite Halloween candy is Life Savers?!?

I mean, what the fuck, you guys? This is obviously insane, because no one's favorite candy is Life Savers. In fact, are Life Savers even candy? I think of them more as items used to collect lint in your aunt's purse, or to for that sparks-fly-out-of-your-mouth trick at summer camp. But has any trick-or-treater, regardless of age, thrilled to a bowl of Life Savers? (They're better than raisins, but, still.)

According to Influenster (I dunno) and reported on CBS5's website, after surveying 40,000 people across the US, they established that while Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the most popular Halloween candy in the country, Californians picked Life Savers as their top treat.

Can this be true? To bunk or debunk this assertion, I've created a little poll. Do not disappoint me, California.

Related: The 13 Spookiest Halloween Storefronts In San Francisco

According to the Chron, 27 different fliers urging San Francisco voters to vote this way or that have been sent off in the last two days, a typical bounty in the weeks leading up to an election. Most political operatives will tell you that paper, USPS-delivered mailers are the linchpin of any successful campaign (or at least one of its most significant budget items). And every year we see reporting on how various mailers allegedly misrepresent the facts or commit crimes against PhotoShop. But it all this just a campaign-reporter ouroboros? Do any real people actually bother to read those damn things?

There's an argument to be made that maybe they do — after all, older voters are reportedly the fastest-growing segment of the electorate, and we all know how much old people love to get mail! Political analyst David Latterman tells SFist that even in a town as young-seeming as San Francisco, voters that are over the age of 65 make up more than 50% of San Francisco voters.

Regardless of age, however, direct mail is the "most efficient" way for campaigns to get their message to any voter in a "dense urban environment" like San Francisco, Latterman says. [To be clear, since at least one commenter appears confused, we're not talking about the Voter Information Pamphlet, which is not direct mail that's sent by a campaign, and instead comes from the city's Department of Elections.]

"There are studies to show that everyone looks at a mailer, maybe even for 7 or ten seconds as they're taking it to the recycling bin," Latterman says. "Others let them pile up and read them all, say, on the Saturday before the election." And since campaigns can buy vote information from SF's Department of Elections, campaigns can then target individual groups voters in a way that Latterman says TV commercials cannot.

So that's why you'll keep getting a bunch of fliers in your mailbox pretty much every day from today through November 4. But the question at hand is, will you read any of them?

Let's hear it:

In 2010, SFist readers selected Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as their favorite Halloween candy. (We should point out that the noted peanut butter-chocolate orgasms are also French Laundry master chef Thomas Keller's favorite junk food!) But now we must know, connoisseurs of fun-size delights, what is the worst Halloween treat? (Besides razorblades, of course.) Is it a box of raisins? Jolly Ranchers? a fistful of pennies? those vile little rolls of chalky Smarties? Nik-L-Nips?

When asked to divulge his least favorite All Hallow's Eve candy, SFist associate editor Andrew Dalton said, "The grossest has to be those peanut butter taffy things that come in unmarked wax paper. It's the worst taffy and probably a great vehicle for GHB or razor blades." Your editor, however, must go with Hershey's Special Dark since that's mom's chocolate. And that chocolate mom keeps in her special drawer is gross.

Let us know your worst pick in the comments. On Monday we will conduct a poll so that, come Halloween, you'll know what not to hand out the year. You're welcome.

After scores of entries poured in for our query asking for the worst named restaurant in the Bay Area, we have arrived at a cringe-worthy group for you to pore over. One commenter mentioned King Dong in Berkeley. "King Dong...Mostly because when I tell anyone I'm going, it's sophomore year of high school revisited," they quipped. Peter Hartikka gave us Curry Boyzz, saying, "Punjabi cuisine for circuit partiers, apparently." And RickRescue gave us the brilliantly named (but possibly fake) Nachos de los Muertos, which we not only find brilliant but we plan on using to name our firstborn. You think we're kidding. Anyway, many of you entered the Clam House, Nopa, and Tacolicious -- all of which serve astounding food, but bear curious names.

Also, it goes without saying that, more or less, these are exceptional restaurants that deserve your Open Table reservations and dollars. We do not hate any of them, in fact. So, please, do not select them based off of their food quality; choose them based off of their terrible or pretentious christening. (Your SFist editor, saddled with the first name Brock, grew up a [then] pin-thin, tall, redhead young boy with legs that still go all the way up. Spending many hours in both tap and ballet classes, "Brock" was and is not our ideal name.) If you find it too offensive for your tender tush, you have bigger salt cod to fry than our fun online poll.

Choose wisely. Poll closes at noon on Thursday.

While the Bay Area is home to some of the finest gastronomic houses of swell repute, we are also home to some of the silliest and most pretentious restaurant names. Take, for example, A16. What does that even mean? (Do not answer that.) Or SPQR. (That would be like an American-themed restaurant in Italy called EPU.) Or Tacolicious. (The only acceptable case for using the -licious suffix is here or here.) We should point out that the aforementioned restaurants are exemplary and downright tasty. However, the names of newfangled restaurants are starting to grate. Our eye-rolling muscles can only take so much. And when you have to read about them over and over again on local food blogs, they grown even more tiresome. (What the hell does State Bird Provisions mean? Again, don't answer that.) This is where you come in, readers.

Give us a restaurant's name that irks you. Do not give the name of a joint you cannot stand, a place where the food blows, or that restaurant where your ex dumped you one night long ago. Take that nonsense to Yelp. We just want the Bay Area restaurant with the worst name. We will later have a poll to decide the winner. And, yes, "pop-up" is an acceptable candidate. More than acceptable candidate, in fact.

Oh, and the best named restaurants in the Bay Area? Flour + Water, Phuket Thai, and Penthouse Club & Steakhouse, naturally. Now start naming names in the comments.

What with S.F. Blackout Week S.F. Cocktail Week a few days away, we thought it fitting to ask the city's biggest booze fans (i.e., SFist readers) to reveal their favorite watering hole. Call us pinko commie tools, but we still believe in the bar or restaurant as a whole rather than glorifying the star chef or, as in this case, the bartender/mixologist. Which is why we're asking for you to tell us your favorite bar in San Francisco -- your single favorite gin joint right now. You can't pick just one, you bemoan? Fine. You can pick two. But that's it.

Here's what we need: In either the comments section or on our Facebook page, tell us your favorite high-end bar (e.g., Jasper's, Comstock, RN74, chic wine bar) and your favorite affordable bar (e.g., Specs, Truck, Dirty Thieves, Twin Peaks). Yes, the middle class is dead, so we want only pricey and economically feasible venues in which to get lit. After that, we will take a poll among your nominees, and then put the final two winners up against each other. (A knockdown battle of the classes, really.) The winner will then be rewarded with lots and lots of customers.

If you need inspiration, check out SFist's Favorite $10 Cocktail Spots. Also, if you mention more than two, we'll pick your first two. Period.

Have your two nominees in no later than 5 p.m. on Thursday. Cheers.

According to a recent poll by Grove Insight of Portland, Ed Lee is ahead in the mayoral race. Far ahead. But City Attorney Dennis Herrera is gaining on him. A recent SFGate post reports that the city's interim mayor is "winning 35 percent of the first-place votes in the first round of the city's ranked-choice voting, followed by 23 percent for Herrera."

The poll, with an error of "plus or minus four percentage points," is being disputed by team Lee, of course. "It's so out of synch with any other poll," Lee campaign spokesman Tony Winnicker told City Insider. "The only way they could get those results is if they sampled his Christmas card list."

[SFGate]