Chronicle poll shows S.F. Mayor Breed’s re-election bid is in danger

More than eight months out from election day and as about 40% of the electorate remains undecided, the poll found that former mayor and supervisor Mark Farrell — who officially announced his candidacy the day before polling began — would have the most support in the first round of ranked-choice voting, though his lead is within the poll’s margin of error. 

Critically, the poll suggests Breed may struggle under the city’s ranked-choice voting system, in which many voters’ second or third choices are usually important in the final outcome. Breed received fewer second-choice votes in the poll than either Farrell or Lurie, the latter of whom was strongest in the second round. More than a third of respondents said they would rank Breed last, after her three main challengers currently in the race.

“Obviously, with the number of undecided voters that we have, you don’t want to draw too firm of a conclusion,” said Jonathan Brown, the Sextant Strategies president who led the Chronicle poll. “But … if this is the field of major candidates right now, it certainly looks like Breed is in very, very serious trouble.”

The poll of 812 likely voters, conducted this month, found that the vast majority — 71% — disapprove of Breed’s job performance. A 2022 Chronicle poll found that Breed’s popularity had plummeted and 35% of residents thought she’d done a poor or very poor job at making the city a better place to live.

In this most recent poll, dissatisfaction with Breed was consistent across key issues: Voters reported broad displeasure with how the mayor was handling public safety, homelessness, drug overdoses and housing affordability.

 Breed’s campaign argues that she’s beginning to turn the city around. And she could still get re-elected — especially if she’s able to win over a sizable number of undecided voters or if enough voters change their minds about some of her opponents. 

Maggie Muir, a political consultant for Breed’s re-election campaign, defended the mayor’s leadership in a statement and pointed to one of the poll’s positive findings about public safety. Even though most likely voters said they disapproved of Breed’s approach to crime, 70% said they felt somewhat or very safe in their own neighborhood.  

Muir also credited Breed with beginning to improve San Francisco’s business climate and reducing the city’s overall crime rate. Experts previously told the Chronicle it’s too soon to say whether Breed’s policies are responsible for the 7% drop in reported crimes last year.

“Mayor Breed continues to boldly lead the city’s recovery, with a laser focus on economic revitalization and public safety,” Muir said. “The election that Mayor Breed is focused on right now is in two weeks when voters go to the polls for her proposed ballot measures to make the city safer, support our neighborhoods, and bring more investment and housing Downtown.”

In a statement, Farrell’s campaign manager Jade Tu said she was “encouraged” that Farrell was in the lead on first-choice votes just days after officially entering the race. While other candidates have spent large sums and campaigned for months, “we are just getting started,” Tu said. 

“It is clear that voters have lost faith in Mayor Breed’s ability to turn San Francisco around and are hungry for a candidate who has a track record of effective leadership inside and outside of City Hall,” Tu said. “Voters are backing Mayor Farrell’s vision and platform that is focused on creating a safer, cleaner, and more vibrant San Francisco on Day 1 of his administration.”

Lurie, who founded the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community, performed best on second-choice votes in the Chronicle poll. Among the likely voters who selected a first-choice candidate, 24% said they’d rank Lurie second, compared to 17% for Farrell and 10% for Breed. Lurie’s campaign-commissioned poll conducted in January also found that he would get the most second-choice votes if the election were held now.

In the ranked-choice system, voters can rank up to 10 candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote on the first ballot, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to their voters’ next-highest choices. The tallying process gets repeated until one candidate secures a majority of the votes.

Tyler Law, a consultant for the Lurie campaign, said in a statement that the Chronicle survey and the campaign’s internal polling show that Lurie “has the broadest appeal and widest path to victory.”

“This is the worst possible environment to run as a City Hall insider who has failed on crime, homelessness, and corruption — a profile that matches all of Daniel’s opponents,” Law said.

The Chronicle poll was conducted from Feb. 14-18. Likely voters were recruited by text and email to respond to an online survey. To assure the results were representative of San Francisco’s likely voter population, the results were weighted to account for differences in response rates by demographic groups. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4%.

Asked how they would describe the quality of life in San Francisco, 61% said it was “just adequate” or “poor.” A similar percentage said they thought the quality of life in the city would either stay the same or worsen in the next few years.

Less than a third of likely voters — 28% — said they approved of Breed’s job performance. Twenty-nine percent said they somewhat disapproved and 42% said they strongly disapproved of the job she was doing as mayor. 

The Chronicle poll also asked voters to rank their approval of Breed’s handling of five duties: “Keeping residents and businesses safe from crime,” “providing shelter to the homeless,” “keeping neighborhoods clean,” “handling the city’s overdose crisis” and “providing enough reasonably-priced housing.” More than two-thirds of likely voters disapproved of her response to each issue, with the share of negative responses exceeding 70% in four of the five categories. 

“There just doesn’t feel like there’s a toehold anywhere for her to use as the building block of her campaign in terms of justifying (another) term,” Brown said.

While the Chronicle poll showed Farrell and Lurie as Breed’s strongest challengers for now, many voters are unfamiliar with all of Breed’s competitors. Forty-five to 50% of likely voters said they didn’t know enough about Farrell, Lurie or Safaí to rank their personal feelings about them or refused to answer the question. 

That unfamiliarity could provide an opening for Breed or Safaí to increase their standing — or for another candidate to enter the race. Currently, none of the major candidates hail from San Francisco’s traditionally progressive political camp. Progressive Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin has been floated as a potential mayoral candidate, but he’s told the Chronicle he was not inclined to run, even while admitting “it’s not totally out of the question.”

Safaí has been trying to appeal to progressive voters, and he performed best among candidates who identified as progressive in the poll. Still, more than half of progressive voters said they weren’t sure who they’d vote for. 

To Safaí’s campaign, the poll results demonstrated that the mayor’s race is “wide open with over eight months to go and an entire election for voters to consider first on March 5th,” advisor Derek Jansen said in a statement.

“Ahsha Safaí isn’t propped up by billionaires, he’s standing up for working families,” Jansen said. “When voters take a closer look at this race, they will find that Ahsha Safaí has the leadership and experience that San Franciscans are looking for in our next mayor.”

Reach J.D. Morris: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @thejdmorris