Thursday, March 24, 2011

Denver mayoral race poll

Via ColoradoPols, RBI Strategies has put out a poll in the Denver mayoral race, asking city residents their opinions about the many candidates. The results can probably be summed up by one of two questions: "Who?" and "There's an election this year?" With just three weeks remaining before the election, Denverites still don't have much of a sense of who these candidate are. The vote preferences, including leaners, are as follows:

  • Romer (22)
  • Mejia (10)
  • Hancock (9)
  • Linkhart (7)
  • Boigon (5)
  • Spahn (2)
  • Other (5)
  • DK/NA/Undec. (45)
So, not terribly surprisingly, Romer has the lead, based largely on his name-recognition (dad was governor). But still, he's only at 22 percent, with nearly half of respondents having no opinion. This is not necessarily a poor reflection on the candidates -- it's an off-year, off-season, non-partisan, municipal election involving candidates who are mostly city council members (Pop quiz: name yours!). No, three weeks isn't a long time for making a decision, but a lot of the advertising is just kicking in.

Compare this poll with one taken the week prior to the 2003 mayor's race. In that poll, Hickenlooper (whom no one had heard of a few months earlier) was already at 40%, and only 3% of respondents were undecided. I'm guessing we'll get to something close to that within the next two weeks. Some negative ads would really help.

1 comment:

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

When Hick was first elected, the first round election was almost pure pure "tribal" politics. Majority black districts favored the black candidate (Penfield Tate), majority Hispanic districts favored the Hispanic candidate, majority white districts favored Hick - the leader of the pack of white candidates.

This could easily repeat this year. Hancock and Meija could sweep area of respective black and Hispanic strength, while Romer-Linkhart-Boigon-Spahn could duke it out for the white vote, with Romer almost surely outdoing his competitors in that demographic.

At that point the question becomes, how will voters in the ethnicity that doesn't make it to the second round vote, and how will "not Romer" whites vote.

My guess is that Meija would win more "not Romer" whites than Hancock. But, I'm not very clear on how Hancock voters would vote for Meija v. Romer, or one how many Meija voters would vote for Hancock v. Romer. Campaigning between rounds could really influence that.