Poll bankrolled by Rahm’s top donor shows ‘strong chance’ for third term
A poll bankrolled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s close friend, business adviser and largest political donor shows Emanuel in relatively decent shape to win a third-term if he chooses to pursue it.
Michael Sacks, CEO of Grosvenor Capital Management, asked New York-based Global Strategy Group to take a closer look at the crowded, 2019 race for mayor to do his own assessment of where things stand.
With “lots of polls flying around” portraying Emanuel as virtually unelectable, Sacks turned to a firm he knows and trusts to take another look.
Global Strategy Group does polling for Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker. The firm has also done polling for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The poll of 600 likely mayoral election voters was conducted July 22 to 29. It included both cellphones and land lines and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Results for Emanuel were far from a slam dunk. But they are encouraging nevertheless, considering the conventional wisdom that he faces an uphill climb to win a third term.
Emanuel’s job approval rating stands at 50 percent and is “above water” across all demographic groups. Despite the continuing fallout from the mayor’s handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, Emanuel’s highest job approval rating comes from AfricanAmericans at 53 percent, followed by Hispanics at 51 percent and whites at 48 percent.
In a Round 1 sampling that includes six candidates, Emanuel leads the field with 32 percent of the vote. Garry McCarthy is a distant second at 13 percent, followed by Paul Vallas (9 percent), Lori Lightfoot and Willie Wilson (both at 8 percent) and Dorothy Brown (6 percent). County Commissioner Bridget Gainer had just 1 percent. She has since decided not to enter the race.
Emanuel’s share of the vote rises to 48 percent, just shy of the 50 percent-plus-one needed to avoid a runoff, when voters receive “simulated positive and negative messaging about all of the candidates” akin to television commercials. In that case, McCarthy is the only challenger to get into double digits and just barely — at 10 percent.
If, as expected, there is a runoff, Emanuel holds a commanding lead over all challengers in head-to-head matchups before any positive or negative messaging. Vallas comes the closest with 37 percent of the vote to Emanuel’s 44 percent. McCarthy is 13 percentage points behind. Lightfoot is 16 percentage points behind.
Sacks said he decided to commission his own poll because, “I felt like a lot of the poll numbers being thrown around were lacking integrity.”
“I believe the poll shows that Rahm is the clear favorite. He basically clobbers all candidates. I can’t imagine that any of the myriad candidates see things differently,” Sacks wrote in a text message to the Sun-Times.
In a telephone interview Monday, pollster Jeff Pollock said the “bottom line” for Emanuel is that he stands “a strong chance” to earn a third-chance from Chicago voters and “starts off in poll position to do so.”
“Is it gonna be easy? No. The last one wasn’t either. But, there are plenty of numbers here to suggest that he can be victorious,” Pollock said.