Earlier this month there was a poll for the all-important race for mayor of San Diego. It was financed by TV station KGTV, but it was not one of those bogus “call-in” surveys or Internet polls.
The results showed my favorite — San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio — with an early but encouraging lead over his opponents (some not yet declared).
Councilman Carl DeMaio 22%
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis 15%
Rep. Bob Filner 14%
State Senator Christine Kehoe 12%
State Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher 7%
http://www.10news.com/news/28176616/detail.html
Since the poll has come out, two points have been raised:
1. Christine Kehoe dropped in and then out of the race with breathtaking speed. A former San Diego City Council person, she would have faced devastating attacks for her past performance — and her considerable culpability for today’s city financial mess.
She quickly came to her senses. I was actually disappointed, as open season on Kehoe would have been a fun pastime for me (I’m easily entertained).
Now that Kehoe is gone, that leaves Bob Filner as the only Democrat in the race. Given that most of Kehoe’s “votes” in the survey would go to Filner, he is in fact the likely frontrunner TO MAKE THE RUNOFF. I emphasize that point because getting into the runoff is a far cry from winning the election.
Just ask Donna Frye. As the only credible Democrat in the 2005 special election for mayor, she handily won the primary. But then in the general election the voters for all the other candidates (including mine) went to the remaining candidate, Republican Jerry Sanders. Frye got waxed.
2. Legitimate objections have been raised about the methodology of the survey — challenging the DeMaio lead. The SurveyUSA effort used “registered voters,” which is not as accurate as using the more difficult to poll “likely voters.” But if one digs into the survey details online, there’s interesting data that helps better predict the voter preference.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=51ba4319-2bf1-41c5-99aa-3171a4f23e0c
First off, let me conjecture a bit: Pro-DeMaio registered voters are more likely to actually vote than registered voters who prefer the other candidates. DeMaio supporters are generally more informed — and more political aroused — than all but the public employees. Hence, if anything, the poll is likely UNDERstating the vote DeMaio currently could expect to get at that point in time (early June).
This is further borne out by the poll’s demographics. While DeMaio gets 22% of the poll, he gets 28% of the age 65+ voters, 27% of the 50-64 voters, 22% of the 35-49 voters and only 8% of the flaky 18-34 voters. And we all know who shows up to vote — especially in primaries.
Also note the relatively small number of undecided voters — 14%. This is remarkable for an election that is a year away. Obviously things could change, but at this point and with this field of candidates, I’d say that DeMaio is an odds-on favorite to make the runoff.
In a DeMaio-Filner runoff, we’d see a replay of the Prop D sales tax initiative. We’d see Filner, the Democrat faithful and the public employee unions vs. everyone else. I expect the outcome of the mayoral election would be similar — in DeMaio’s favor.
And the taxpayers.