Eric Ting, SFGATE March 16, 2022 (SFGate.com)
We’re less than three months away from the recall election of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and we finally have a poll of the race.
The poll, conducted by Bay Area-based EMC Research, found that 68% of voters support recalling Boudin in the June 7 election. It’s worth pointing out that the poll, conducted among 800 respondents, was commissioned by recall organizers. However, EMC Research has long been an active polling firm in the region and in July of last year, provided polls showing that members of the San Francisco Board of Education were in imminent recall danger (three members were eventually recalled in a landslide in February).
The 800 respondents were surveyed in “a mixed mode telephone and email- and text-to-web survey conducted February 17th – 21st, 2022,” EMC Research said. The poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points, and was conducted in English and Chinese.
The poll also found that 74% of respondents have an unfavorable opinion of Boudin, and that 61% believe he “is responsible for rising crime rates in San Francisco, especially burglaries and thefts.” (City data is noisy as it relates to whether overall crime is actually increasing in the city, but some property crimes including burglaries and motor vehicle thefts have seen clear increases in the past two years.)
Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents believe crime has gotten worse over the past year. Surveyed individuals said they were most worried about car and home break-ins as well as public drug use.
Perhaps the most striking finding from the poll is that voters have largely made up their minds. The original split was 68% to 32% in favor of recalling Boudin, and that gap grew only slightly to 71% to 28% when respondents were presented with “reasons to support a recall,” which include crime rates. Conversely, the gap closed only narrowly to 66% to 33% when respondents were given “reasons to oppose a recall,” which include recall organizers’ past support for Republicans such as Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.
You can look at full results here.
Written By Eric Ting
Eric Ting is SFGATE’s politics editor. He is an East Bay native who has a Master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University. Eric did his undergrad at Pomona College, where he majored in politics and minored in economics. Email: eric.ting@sfgate.com
