As the November city elections loom, one poll conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP), headquartered in North Carolina, and another done by Oakland’s EMC Research show that San Franciscans like Mayor London Breed, but they still don't think she's gotten the city on the right track.
Between October 11th and 12th, per the Chronicle, the North Carolina-based canvassing agency — which found in a separate national poll that voters are more concerned about health care and taxation than just about anything Trump-related — queried 529 SF voters.
Their results? Well, let’s just say it appears charisma appears not to correlate directly to credibility.
The PPP found virtually a three-way tie in her performance rankings: 35 percent supported Breed’s performance as it stands, while another 30 percent disapproved, leaving the remaining 35 percent feeling ambivalent about Breed’s brief tenure as mayor.
Earlier in the month, however, a separate poll conducted by EMC Research of Oakland showed that, at the very least, voters found her likable. Surveying 525 suspected voters, the poll showed that more than half of those questioned, 56 percent, found her “favorable”; the survey was conducted in tandem to help test the grounds for yet-announced health care and homelessness initiatives.
At issue in the more recent poll was Breed's controversial handling of the District Attorney appointment two weeks ago. The poll found that 40 percent of respondents disapproved of Breed's quick appointment of Suzy Loftus, who is now up for election against three other candidates in just two weeks. Only 25 percent said they agreed with the overtly political move, with 35 percent saying they weren't sure (or, more likely, hadn't been reading about this inside-baseball news).
Not surprisingly, Breed had a few words to share with regard to these polls.
“The problems facing the city have been building for years,” said Breed yesterday when she was poked about her performance rating, per the Chronicle’s reporting.
Mayor Breed won the office seat in May of 2018 after the untimely death of then-mayor Ed Lee, besting former city supervisor and State Senator Mark Leno, and both San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim and former supervisor Angela Alioto for the role.
“But with time and work, people will see changes for the better. But it’s not going to happen overnight or in the first year in office,” Breed continued.
The latter-mentioned survey also proved what San Franciscans have known for some time: Our city isn’t going in the right direction. 57 percent of voters in that EMC Research poll agreed that San Francisco is still on the “wrong track,” only 33 percent believing everything is fine-and-dandy, just the way they are. (Spoiler alert: They're not.)
The two polls were conducted with a reported margin of error around 4 percent, each.
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