If the new Chronicle poll is accurate—and that’s a huge “if,” more on that in a moment—then Breed’s strategy of being cruel and inhumane to the poor, the mentally ill, and the unhoused is working. She’s the only candidate moving up in the polls.
That’s a hell of a way to win an election.
But it’s happened before: Gavin Newsom got elected mayor in part on a platform of taking away from homeless people the tiny bit of money they got from the county’s welfare program. It was called “care, not cash,” and it created more poverty and desperation on the streets, and probably more crime, but it played well at the ballot box.
Now Breed seems to be following the same playbook: Attack the most vulnerable, address social and economic problems with the police, and get a whole lot of press doing it.
The Chron seems fine with that approach. The LA Times Editorial Board has a very different perspective. In a piece called “Newsom, San Francisco take wrong turn on homelessness,” the paper says:
Mayor London Breed has chosen to follow Newsom’s example and undertake a “very aggressive” clearing of encampments in which police cite and move people along if they don’t take an offer of shelter on the spot. This ignores the fact that there are 8,300 homeless people in San Francisco, but the city’s 3,600 shelter beds are nearly at capacity. Breed followed that by ordering outreach workers to offer bus, train or plane tickets out of town to homeless individuals — if they have a connection to the destination — before offering any services such as shelter. This seems less about the mayor aiding homeless people than banishing them as she runs for reelection. …. Homelessness is the most stark example of wealth inequality in the country. It’s been suggested that some Californians are just tired of seeing it. They have “encampment fatigue.” Well, no one has more fatigue than the people living in encampments. … It’s encouraging that Los Angeles city and county leaders appear to understand what Newsom and San Francisco’s mayor seem to have forgotten: Simply pushing people off a sidewalk has never reduced homelessness, and it won’t work now.
So let’s go back to the poll.
Opinion sampling is a challenging science these days. The concept of getting a “random sample” of voters used to center on using a computer to generate random local phone numbers and calling them; these days, hardly anyone has a land line and most people don’t answer their cell phones unless they recognize the incoming number.
That technique doesn’t work very well any more.
So pollsters also use texts and emails (which they get from the voter registration files, among other places). That’s also a skewed sample, since there’s no rule saying you have to list your cell phone or email to register to vote, and people like me who registered 40 years ago when no such things existed aren’t always in that database.
I called the polling firm, Sextant Strategies, and they told me the poll was entirely online and text.
The universe of people who respond to pollsters’ texts and emails is skewed, probably in favor of younger, more tech-savvy voters and people whose primary language is English.
I think it under-represents older voters, who don’t respond to these kinds of polls at the same level as young voters—and while the typical argument is that older voters, especially homeowners, are more conservative, in this case I think a lot of them are Peskin voters, folks who don’t trust developers and worry about the future of their neighborhoods.
Good pollsters adjust, or weight, their results to account for age and other demographic differences, but it’s not an exact science.
There are other polls out there that show somewhat different results
So I’m not saying the Chron poll is intentionally or even entirely inaccurate. But it probably underestimates the support for Peskin and maybe for Safai and it probably overestimates the support for Breed and Lurie.
Lurie immediately jumped on the poll saying it shows him winning:
“This poll confirms that Daniel Lurie remains best positioned to defeat Mayor London Breed. San Franciscans remain unhappy with the status quo and ranked-choice voting makes it very likely voters will get the change they desire,” said Tyler Law, campaign consultant for Daniel Lurie. “Mark Farrell’s momentum and fundraising have stalled under the weight of his significant ethics violations. Daniel continues to have the highest popularity, the greatest share of second and third-choice votes, and a significant resource advantage that will be pressed in the final three months of this campaign. Our campaign is the only one built to go the distance.”
Actually, all the major candidates have enough money to go the distance.
Peskin’s campaign issued a statement saying that the poll is “dismissing important groups like renters, progressives and Cantonese speakers. But these are the communities that will carry us to victory.”
The poll, indeed, includes more homeowners than renters, in a city where about 65 percent of the voters are renters (and renters, particularly renters who have been in the city for years and benefit from rent control, are a key Peskin constituency).
The other interesting element: Now that she has a poll showing her with a growing lead, Breed is backing off from public appearances. From Lurie:
The Commonwealth Club has notified mayoral candidates that they are canceling their August 14th debate following Mayor London Breed’s decision not to participate. The debate was slated to be co-hosted by Connected SF, Voice of SF, and moderated by Melissa Griffin Caen. Debate organizers have also shared that the mayor’s campaign conveyed their intention to not participate in any additional debates.
That’s a classic front-runner strategy; debates won’t do her any good and could do harm. But it’s not much of a statement of interest in accountability to the public.
Full disclosure: My son and daughter both work on the Peskin for Mayor campaign.
