BEHIND IN THE POLLS: EVERYONE
‘Undecided’ a clear mayoral favorite as whole field lacks name recognition
The first poll in the Boston mayoral race since the field filled out shows acting Mayor Kim Janey and City Councilor Michelle Wu leading the pack — and observers say this should be a wake-up call to the trailing candidates.
“The gloves need to come off,” said consultant Mike McCormack, a former city councilor.
The other candidates need to start turning to more creative options like TV commercials to get their names and faces out there, consultants told the Herald.
The poll from MassInc, WBUR and the Dorchester Reporter has Wu at 19% and Janey at 18% in a statistical tie for the lead. Then there’s a sizable drop to City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George at 6%, City Councilor Andrea Campbell at 4%, then former city economic development director John Barros and state Rep. Jon Santiago, both at 3%.
The poll was conducted from April 7 to 11, and included 552 registered voters — of whom 46% said they were still undecided.
Several political consultants said they were unsurprised that Wu, who’s been a very active at-large city councilor for the better part of a decade, and Janey, who now has the luxury of constant press coverage as acting mayor, were doing well in this early survey.
“The other ones are having a hard time generating any kind of heat,” McCormack said. “The folks who aren’t double digits in the poll need to get cookin’.”
All of the candidates had much higher favorability than unfavorability ratings, but more than 40% of people had never heard of EssaibiGeorge and Campbell, and more than 50% didn’t know Santiago and Barros.
The preliminary election to cut the field down to the top two is in September, so a big goal for each candidates is to turn many of those undecideds into fans by then. McCormack suggested that the trailing candidates start shelling out for TV commercials — an unusual move in a mayoral race, but one also mentioned by political consultant Wilnelia Rivera.
“TV can be a game changer in this,” Rivera said, suggesting candidates to think about both English and Spanish channels.
Rivera said she’s normally loath to recommend TV — when she ran now-U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s successful upstart campaign for Congress in 2018, the campaign only spent on Spanish-speaking channels, otherwise focusing on mailers and radio spots — but the candidates who aren’t polling as well need to get their faces and pitches out fast.
“When you’re trying to make up ground, the airwaves really matter,” she said.
Political consultant Jacqueta Van Zandt said many of the female candidates all have focused on using social media and alternative media to hold events focused on the nuts and bolts of specific issues.
“They are not doing broadbased campaigning, and it is working in their favor,” she said.
Van Zandt noted that this polling has come right in the midst of the flood of stories about the historic nature of Janey’s ascension to acting mayor. On March 22, she became the first Black person and first woman to serve as the city’s chief executive, and multiple weeks of local and national news stories focused on that right before the poll went into the field.
“We love historic things for 10 days,” Van Zandt said. “And then the honeymoon is over.”