{"id":47743,"date":"2026-04-16T19:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=47743"},"modified":"2026-04-16T19:00:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:00:27","slug":"what-the-new-chakrabarti-poll-really-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/16\/what-the-new-chakrabarti-poll-really-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"What the new Chakrabarti poll really shows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The real question is not just percentage\u2014it’s who votes<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 14, 2026 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saikat Chakrabarti, candidate for Congress, is promoting a poll that puts him in second place behind State Sen. Scott Wiener<\/a> in the top-two primary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chakrabarti campaign paid for the poll, and candidates release internal polls to the press for two reasons: They want to convince donors that they have a chance of winning, or they want to convince donors and potential supporters of other candidates that they\u2019re going to wind up on top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s look at the poll for a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Chakrabarti\u2019s campaign released a poll that may not tell the whole story<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First: It\u2019s very hard to get accurate polling data these days, particularly from a relatively small sample (547 likely voters). Polling relies on a truly random sample, which was easy when everyone had a landline and answered the phone when it rang. Now, pollsters try to reach voters on cell phones, and most young people don\u2019t answer their phones at all, particularly when they don\u2019t know the caller, and from texts, which again have tremendous sampling bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poll was only in English, and some 19,000 voters in the district have requested Chinese-language ballots (and another 4,000 have Spanish-language ballots). Sup. Connie Chan, who was ranked well below the two guys, will probably get a significant number of the Chinese-language voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poll claims a margin of error of four percent. Sorry for the math, but: That means Wiener is somewhere between 29 percent and 37 percent. Chakrabarti is between 24 and 32. Chan is between 9 and 17. So it\u2019s entirely possible that the real numbers are Wiener 28, Chakrabarti 24, and Chan 17, with a lot of undecideds. Again, this counts only the English-speaking voters; if more than half of the Chinese language voters break for Chan, she\u2019s at 20 and Chakrabarti is at 21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With 527 voters, I\u2019d say the margin of error is probably higher than 4 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know of no independent polling in the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sponsored link<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chan\u2019s campaign points to a few problems with the poll<\/strong>, including text messages that identified Chakrabarti as the state Senator<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
From Chan\u2019s Instagram<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But it demonstrated a few key things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you compare this poll to polls taken a few months ago, before Chakrabarti started pouring more than $1 million of his own money into ads and paying more than 200 canvassers to knock on doors, it appears he has picked up about ten points. Roughly half of that came from Wiener, and the rest from \u201cundecided.\u201d Chan is about where she was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wiener\u2019s big-money donors clearly don\u2019t want to run against Chakrabarti in the November election, since he has almost as much money as they do. That\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing so many attack pieces targeting Chakrabarti<\/a> and aimed at young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But those attack pieces apparently haven\u2019t been very successful. It\u2019s surprising the Wiener IE, which has gobs of money, hasn\u2019t spent more\u2014unless the polling indicates that the attack messages aren\u2019t working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chakrabarti tested them and his possible responses in the poll:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The real race at this point<\/strong> is not about which candidate is more popular; it\u2019s about who votes. There\u2019s no presidential primary, and the primary for governor of California is such a godawful mess that some progressives might sit it out (who are you voting for? Is there anyone any of us on the SF left are walking precincts or carrying signs for? I\u2019m not seeing it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are deeply contested supervisor races, with a lot of money and voter outreach, in D2 and D4. D2 is conservative, a place where Wiener has been popular in the past\u2014but a lot of residents don\u2019t like the fact the Wiener has made the gigantic Marina Safeway project<\/a> possible<\/a>. If Chan and Chakrabarti can get that message out in D2, it could undercut Wiener.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D4 is mixed, but has a lot of Chinese voters and union members, which could help Chan. Mayor Lurie and his big-money operation are supporting Alan Wong, and several other serious candidates are canvassing for voters\u2014and none of them are openly supporting Wiener, who backed closing the Great Highway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d like to see an independent poll of 1,000 likely voters, in Chinese, Spanish, and English, adjusted for where we\u2019re likely to see the highest turnout. Papers like the Chron used to do that, but it\u2019s a $25,000 nut, and they no longer care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s take all these polls for what they are\u2014a snapshot, not always a good one, of a moment in time with a select number of voters, released by campaigns for political reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s wrong. I\u2019m just saying it\u2019s not necessarily right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full disclosure: My daughter works on the Connie Chan for Congress campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here<\/a>. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The real question is not just percentage\u2014it’s who votes By Tim Redmond April 14, 2026 (48hills.org) Saikat Chakrabarti, candidate for Congress, is promoting a poll that puts him in second place behind State Sen. Scott Wiener in the top-two primary. The Chakrabarti campaign paid for the poll, and candidates release internal polls… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47744,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743\/revisions\/47744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}