Tipping Point Community CEO and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie has pulled ahead of his competitors in San Francisco’s crowded mayoral race and is in a virtual tie with incumbent Mayor London Breed, according to a new poll.
About 23% of likely voters put Lurie as their top pick for mayor, while 24% put Breed at the top of their list, according to a new poll commissioned by the San Francisco Chronicle.
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California’s fourth-largest city uses a ranked choice voting system. Under the system, voters rank candidates from their first choice to their least preferred. In multiple rounds of tallying, the candidate who receives the fewest votes is eliminated and their supporters’ votes are carried over to the voters’ next preferred pick until there is a winner.
While Breed edged Lurie out for the top spot, when accounting for voters’ second, third, fourth, and fifth places, Lurie beat Breed 56% to 44% in the final tally.
The poll, conducted Oct. 15-16, surveyed 802 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Breed has struggled to connect with voters who blame her for creating conditions that have led to a sluggish pandemic comeback. They have also blamed her for a rise in personal property theft, drugs, and a homelessness crisis that has blanketed the city.
Though there are 11 candidates in the high-stakes contest to lead San Francisco, there are four candidates realistically in the contest to unseat Breed.
They include Lurie; Mark Farrell, the former interim mayor; Aaron Peskin, Board of Supervisors president; and Supervisor Ahsha Safaí.
The latest numbers reflect a huge jump for Lurie and an equally large fall for Farrell, who had dominated the last round of polling. Farrell went from 20% of first-choice votes to 14%, even as the number of undecided voters grew smaller.
“Breed showed some comeback between the first two surveys, but as the race began to take shape and people began to focus on what the next four years of the city will look like, that momentum was blunted,” said Jonathan Brown, president of Sextant Strategies and Research, which conducted the polls commissioned by the San Francisco Chronicle. “Lurie’s advertising, as well as the other candidates’, helped make that happen.”
Lurie has gotten a massive wave of contributions. So far, his campaign and an independent committee backing him have raised more than $15 million. Of that, about $8 million came from Lurie himself.
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Much of the rest came from his wealthy tech friends. Lurie and his backers have spent the money on ads that have pitched himself as a political outsider trying to reform a dysfunctional and disjointed City Hall.
Farrell’s drop in favorability follows multiple allegations that he violated campaign finance laws. There was also an investigation into his time as supervisor and accusations he steered money to a “favored nonprofit” organization from companies trying to influence him.
Farrell, the most right-leaning candidate in the all-Democratic pool, has denied all of the allegations against him.
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Breed has two weeks to turn around souring perceptions of her job performance. In recent months, she has pivoted from pushing progressive ideas to more centrist ones.
She has also been stricter when it comes to clearing homeless encampments, following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) lead.
