The first poll conducted since Mark Farrell jumped into the SF mayor’s race shows him edging London Breed slightly in first-choice votes, while Daniel Lurie does the best in second-choice votes, and there are generally low approval ratings for Breed.
We got our first taste of head-to-head polling in November’s San Francisco mayor’s race about three weeks back, in a poll that showed very impressive numbers for Levi Strauss heir and nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie. But it should be noted that the poll was commissioned by Lurie’s campaign.
We have a more independent poll in today’s Chronicle, commissioned by the Chronicle themselves, that shows Mark Farrell now slightly in the lead, in first-choice voting at least, not even ten days after Farrell jumped in the race.
Mayor London Breed is at serious risk of losing her reelection bid, with a pair of challengers in close competition to unseat her and a majority of S.F. voters holding negative views of her, a new poll commissioned by the Chronicle shows. https://t.co/HW944IGTio
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) February 22, 2024
Though obviously with ranked-choice voting, there’s no way to conduct a perfect poll on whom voters would rank in their second and third choices. But the numbers, as they stand now, are very troubling for Mayor Breed’s reelection campaign.
Farrell came out barely in first place, though within the poll’s 3.4% margin of error. The poll’s first-choice results are seen below:
- Mark Farrell - 20%
- London Breed - 18%
- Daniel Lurie - 16%
- Ahsha Safai - 8%
- Undecided - 38%
Moving to a second choice, Lurie tops the list, as seen in these second-choice results:
- Daniel Lurie - 24%
- Mark Farrell - 17%
- London Breed - 10%
(The Chronicle article does not list a second-choice percentage for Ahsha Safai, and the full poll results have not been made publicly available).
It may be notable that the poll was conducted February 14-18. Farrell announced his candidacy the day before that poll started, February 13.
Ranked choice voting has produced surprising mayoral winners in the Bay Area over the past two decades.
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) February 22, 2024
But that system is unlikely to help Mayor London Breed, given her latest ominous poll results, writes columnist @joegarofoli. https://t.co/fi8hqeUszR
But what is most notable here is that the low approval numbers that have dogged Breed for nearly a year are still low approval numbers. Here’s what the poll found in terms of Breed’s current approval ratings:
- Strongly Disapprove - 42%
- Somewhat Disapprove - 29%
- Somewhat Approve - 23%
- Strongly Approve - 5%
Adding together the “strongly” and the “somewhat” numbers, that would give Breed a 28% approval rating and a 71% disapproval rating.
It’s still eight months out until the November 5 election, and plenty can still happen. And that 38% undecided shows there’s still plenty of room for growth for all of these candidates.
Or even other candidates? While Supervisor Aaron Peskin told the SF Standard last month that he definitely wasn’t running, today’s Chronicle article has a quote from Peskin saying, “It’s not totally out of the question.”
Image: @MarkFarrellSF via Twitter
