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