Dart, Meeks take top two in first Chicago mayor poll :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Carol Marin

Dart, Meeks take top two in first Chicago mayor poll

But all 9 in statistical dead heat; 'don't know' leads with 35%

Comments

BY CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com

It's Chicago's first open-seat mayoral election in more than 60 years, and the field is wide open.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and state Sen. James Meeks might have the early bragging rights as the nominal front-runners -- but even they don't have all that much to brag about.

» Click to enlarge image

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart (left) and state Sen. James Meeks were the only candidates to score in the double-digits in a new Chicago mayor poll conducted exclusively for the Sun-Times.
(John J. Kim~Sun-Times/John H. W

PHOTO GALLERY

Top mayoral candidates

RELATED STORIES

Dart says he'll have a 'head start' 65% happy or indifferent about Daley exit Obama: Rahm would be 'terrific mayor' Daley wants respect, not love PDF: Breakdown of the poll More info on McKeon & Associations

Dart and Meeks were the only candidates to score in the double-digits in a new poll prepared exclusively for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Giving the first real, early glimpse of the developing horse race, the survey conducted by McKeon & Associates found seven other potential mayoral contenders with only single-digit support.

Dart had 12 percent, and Meeks had 10 percent. Rounding out the top five, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez had 9 percent; U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. had 8 percent, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had 7 percent.

But with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points, the poll essentially put the nine contenders it included all in a statistical dead heat.

Close behind Emanuel were City Colleges Board Chairman Gery Chico with 6 percent; CTA Board Chairman Terry Peterson with 4 percent, and Cook County Assessor Jim Houlihan and Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd) each with 3 percent. Three percent chose other candidates.

The survey relied on 600 personal interviews with randomly selected registered Chicago voters. It was conducted Wednesday evening, just a day and a half after Mayor Daley made his stunning announcement that he would not seek a seventh term.

That might explain why the overwhelming winner of the poll, with a whopping 35 percent, was the category of "don't know," suggesting that Chicago voters have only just begun to digest the news of this historic wide-open race.

On a scale of one to 10--with one meaning NOT AT ALL interested and 10 meaning VERY interested--how interested would say you will be in voting in the Feb. 22, 2011 primary for Mayor of Chicago?

6%

34%

33%

26%

If the primary election for Mayor of Chicago were held today, for whom would you vote?

3%

35%

12%

10%

9%

8%

7%

6%

4%

3%

3%

The last time Chicagoans faced a mayoral election with no incumbent was 1947, when scandal-plagued Mayor Edward Kelly stepped down, and the Machine-slated businessman Martin F. Kennelly took his place.

This time, with only five and a half months before the Feb. 22 municipal election, candidates with enough cash to run early television commercials will have a distinct advantage in trying to move those undecided voters.

The key to this election, argues pollster Michael McKeon, "is who can put together coalitions. Nobody is going to win this with just their own group."

McKeon & Associates is a Joliet-based polling and public-opinion research firm that has done national and local surveys for both Republican and Democratic candidates for more than two decades.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the poll did find evidence of votes breaking along racial lines. Dart's strongest support was among white voters, Meeks' among black voters, and clearly Gutierrez benefitted the most from his base of Hispanic voters.

Emanuel, who is white, curiously also found his largest base of support among Hispanic voters -- conceivably because "Emanuel" can also be read as a Hispanic name.

Voters who said they were most eager to vote were most likely to give their support to Dart or Gutierrez.

The survey did not include every possible candidate but focused on those most often mentioned as likely contenders.

Most political observers foresee a crowded ballot, all but ensuring that no candidate will win the necessary majority in February, thereby forcing the top two candidates into an April 5 runoff.

Voter turnout has become tepid in recent mayoral elections -- 33 percent in the last two, after a high of 82 percent in 1983. But this survey found that nearly 60 percent of voters have a heightened interest in the race.

via suntimes.com

Posted via email from Brian's posterous