Breed is No. 1 first pick in Chronicle poll, and declined a debate that’s since been canceled
by JOE RIVANO BARROS AUGUST 8, 2024 (MissionLocal.org)
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Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: London Breed. Read earlier dispatches here.
Polling in a ranked-choice election is hard. San Franciscans will have 10 ovals to fill come Nov. 5, listing candidates from Mayor London Breed and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin to MAGA Republican Ellen Lee Zhou. Everyone’s No. 2 and No. 3 votes — and on and on, depending on how close the race is — will be redistributed to others.
Voters will make a lot of idiosyncratic choices about their favorites, and the permutations will be hard to predict.
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“There isn’t really anyone who’s cracked the code,” said David Binder, a respected San Francisco pollster who, in January, conducted a poll for Daniel Lurie’s campaign finding Lurie would emerge on top. “There isn’t really a good way to do it, and trying to decide who is going to win in a ranked-choice vote through polling isn’t worth the time.”
San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting eliminates the lowest-polling candidate in each round and redistributes their votes onto the remaining candidates, until one wins a majority.
The sample sizes for ranked-choice voting polls are often hundreds of people — a large enough pool to garner estimates on first-place picks. But, once pollsters begin asking those who ranked Breed or Mark Farrell first about their second and third picks, for example, they are relying on sometimes just a few dozen people to make estimates on tens of thousands.
“The margin of error is generally larger than the decisions about who drops out first, who drops out second, and those decisions affect everything,” Binder said. “There’s a domino effect all the way through.”
Still, the talk of the campaign trail on Thursday was the San Francisco Chronicle’s new poll showing Breed had jumped 10 percentage points since February, when the newspaper last surveyed voters. Breed got 28 percent of first-place picks this time, the most of any candidate.
That is a strong showing, and a reliable indication that the race is still Breed’s to lose. But those subsequent rounds can quickly narrow the gap, as the Chronicle neatly analyzed in July: During Breed’s last competitive race, in 2018, she emerged from the first round with 37 percent of the vote, far above former state Sen. Mark Leno and former Supervisor Jane Kim, both at 24 percent.
By the final round, Breed had 51 percent to Leno’s 49 percent. She won by 2,546 votes, just a 1.1 percent difference.
The current polls “tell you who’s in first, second or third in terms of first-place votes, but I don’t think you can extrapolate a lot into how those votes redistribute,” said a longtime political consultant. “It doesn’t necessarily tell you if Peskin is out, where do his votes redistribute? You have to understand the limitations of this poll.”
Also, the campaigns will be lucky if voters begin paying attention to the race in earnest come September. Most will not begin thinking about their choices until they get their ballots in the mail. Those are sent out by the Department of Elections starting Oct. 7.
The campaigns also have significant amounts left to spend on swaying voters; more than $2 million across all the candidates. As of June 30, Breed had $948,705 cash on hand, Ahsha Safaí had $401,714, Farrell $303,202, Peskin $292,665, and Lurie $64,862. The pro-Lurie PAC had $2,594,714 left, and the pro-Breed PAC $454,597. Fundraising will continue.
It is still early, in other words. “None of this stuff is indicative of anything right now,” added another political consultant, who also wished to remain anonymous, “except the starting point.”
Debate canceled after Breed, Peskin decline
On Wednesday, the Commonwealth Club announced that its planned Aug. 14 debate was canceled: Breed said she would not participate, citing a belief that the organizers had already decided to support Farrell, and Peskin, too, pulled out, citing scheduling conflicts. That then led NBC Bay Area, which was set to televise it, to cancel its broadcast.
The concerns raised by Breed’s team revolved around the groups sponsoring the debate: ConnectedSF, an advocacy group led by former Republican and Trump appointee Marie Hurabiell, and Voice of San Francisco, a new nonprofit media outlet run by the former Marina Times editor Susan Dyer Reynolds.
“Our campaign is not participating in the Commonwealth Club debate, because each of the co-hosting organizations (ConnectedSF and Voice of S.F.) have already committed their support to Mark Farrell,” wrote Breed’s spokesperson, Joe Arellano.
Lurie’s team, in a Thursday-morning press release, lambasted Breed’s decision. Citing a statement from organizers, the team said Breed had decided not to participate in any future debates. Breed’s team called the allegation “fake news,” and said they were looking forward to attending several forums and a scheduled Chronicle-KQED debate on Sept. 19.
In an internal email disclosing the news, John Zipperer, editor-in-chief at the Voice of San Francisco and a vice president at the Commonwealth Club, wrote that “due to the unavailability of two of the top five candidates and the subsequent loss of our broadcast partner, we have made the painful decision to cancel the August 14 mayoral debate at Commonwealth Club.”
Voice of San Francisco, he wrote in a response to emailed questions, “does not have future debates planned at this time.”
JOE RIVANO BARROS SENIOR EDITOR
joe.rivanobarros@missionlocal.com
Joe was born in Sweden, where half of his family received asylum after fleeing Pinochet, and spent his early childhood in Chile; he moved to Oakland when he was eight. He attended Stanford University for political science and worked at Mission Local as a reporter after graduating. He then spent time in advocacy as a partner for the strategic communications firm The Worker Agency. He rejoined Mission Local as an editor in 2023.More by Joe Rivano Barros
