San Francisco Mayor London Breed Gains Ground In Mayoral Race

According to a new San Francisco Chronicle/Sextant Strategies poll released on Thursday, Mayor London Breed has pulled ahead in first choice selection for Mayor, beating her closest competitor, former Mayor Mark Farrell, 28% to 20%.

Previous polls have shown a close race between Farrell and Breed. In the first poll released in February, Farrell was up by two points with 20% against Breed’s 18%, followed by Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie with 16% and Supervisor Ahsha Safai with 8%.However, the addition of San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin entering the race in April shook things up. Despite sinking in popularity polls, the controversial Peskin allowed Breed to move up in the next Mayoral polls.

In May, the previous FM3 poll found that, in a ranked-choice vote, Breed would lead with 21%, followed by 16% for both Farrell and Lurie, 12% for Peskin and 7% for Safai. With Undecided votes not being an option, Breed only rose higher, with 29% of the vote, ahead of Lurie and Farrell with 23% of the vote, 16% for Peskin and 9% for Safai. In the final one-on-one ranked choice vote, Breed held with a narrow 51%-49% lead over Farrell.

Things tightened in June, with several polls showing Breed in a close second to Farrell by only one or two percentage points. Breed finally took a narrow lead last month as she began aligning more and more of her policies closer to those of Lurie and Farrell, with Breed leading Farrell by 3 points in a ranked choice vote and beating Farrell 51%-49% in a head to head vote. However, in the last month, Breed has only ramped up her programs on fighting crime and homelessness even more.

Since the July poll, Breed has brought forth a huge sweeping homeless encampment clearance project, opted to not save a guaranteed income program, proposed a plan to start giving welfare recipients $100 a week for negative drug tests, and brought forth a new program to bus the homeless out of the city. While these plans have angered many  on the far left in the city, many moderates and even those leaning to the right have applauded many of the programs. These programs have also neutralized many of the criticisms that Lurie and Farrell have been volleying towards Breed since the beginning of campaigning.

Breed and Farrell

In addition, Mayor Breed has been getting more and more of a positive perception since the beginning of the year. In February she was at a 71% disapproval rating. However, according to the Chronicle poll on Thursday, it is now only at 59%. The new poll also showed that all these things combined have helped her move up amongst voters. 28% of voters would now vote for her as their first choice, a full 8 points ahead of Farrell. Lurie sat at 17%, Peskin at 12%, and Safai at only 5%. 18% remain undecided. While a large percentage for August, this is likely due to many liberal voters now having a hard time deciding following Breed’s shift to the center this summer.

“For whatever reason — changes in city policies or outcomes, the weather, national politics — Breed has gotten herself up off the canvas,” said Sextant Strategies and Research President Jonathan Brown. “Voters know who they don’t want and they know who they do want. It’s a question of whether they fill out the entire ballot and how strategically they’re thinking about things.”

Other analysts questioned if voters would trust Breed’s policy changes a few months from now.

“The question for voters is if she is doing this just to get votes and stay in power another four years, or if she is really trying to make changes now,” said political advisor Sharon Lee to the Globe on Thursday. “Considering the timing of it, it looks like she wants the votes, but she is also losing herself permanently to the far left in the city by starting these up. Newsom did the same thing in the 2000’s and took a major support hit when he tried some less-liberal policies out.”

“Now the focus for her opponents will probably be more on economic issues and law enforcement, as she still hasn’t had any wonder ideas on those yet. But expect them. Breed has many weak spots, but she was also weak on homelessness until the last several weeks, so who knows what else she can pull out on the other issues.”

More polls on the race are expected soon.