San Francisco mayoral race appears to remain close with 2 weeks to election
Just about two weeks out from Election Day and the race for mayor in San Francisco appears to be tightening.
Two polls show the race for first place votes is within the margin of error and among several candidates. A lot of voters, however, are still holding onto their ballots.
Think back to when this race started to take shape and the conventional wisdom was that it was going to be very close. Could a progressive, through ranked choice, upset a group of moderates? The conversation has changed several times since then, but two weeks away from the election and the first impression wasn't so far off.
"About two weeks in and two weeks away in early voting, as we get towards the election," said SF Elections Director John Arntz.
For Arntz and the San Francisco Department of Elections, it's the halfway point. And this milestone comes with two polls in the city's closely watched mayoral race. The first, released by the Aaron Peskin campaign, shows the supervisor having leapt into a tie for first-place votes with Daniel Lurie.
"I mean look, the other three candidates, all of them, supported by billionaires who are pushing San Francisco in the wrong direction, have been busy tearing each other down," Peskin said Monday.
For Peskin, it would be something of a comeback, having been largely left out of the conversation for the last couple of months. And there is some history to support the idea of a late progressive surge.
"Yes, that's historically what we have seen in San Francisco elections is that a progressive candidate emerges towards the end of the election," said Corey Cook, PhD, Professor & Provost at Saint Mary's College. "It often passes the numbers. We can go back to any number of elections really for more than 20 years to see the progressive vote tends to coalesce late."
The second poll, conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle, shows Peskin having jumped ahead of Mark Farrell for first-place votes, but behind a dead heat between Mayor London Breed and Daniel Lurie, who has, for several weeks now, appeared to have an edge in polling that factors in ranked-choice voting.
"I think Daniel Lurie has run a near flawless campaign, positioning himself as an outsider," Cook said. "But it's still, everything is within the margin of error."
And that brings the conversation back to the election's office and something else that will play a huge role in the race. The consolidation of city elections means the mayor's race will get a presidential turnout, which is a lot more votes. And voters have now had two weeks to cast their ballots in this election.
"But the total is less than what we would expect, normally at this time for a presidential contest being on the ballot," Arntz said of the returns so far.
Slow returns are a very good sign that people are still watching this race, and holding off on making that three-vote calculation, maybe until the last minute.
"I think that they're still organizations whose endorsements have just come out.," Cook said. "I think voters are still sifting through a lot of information."
And that, in turn, says something else about the race and the results. If voters are holding off to make that decision, maybe until the last moment, it means the numbers released on election night, will become an increasingly smaller fraction of the total. It will then take even longer to go through all those subsequent ballots that come in and get through all the rounds of rank-choice voting.
So, evidence is already piling up that it will be close, and it may take more than a couple of days to figure out who will be the next mayor of San Francisco.