See how they run: The polls say Peskin just might win. Or maybe Breed? Or Lurie? Or Farrell?

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Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: Aaron Peskin. Read earlier dispatches here.

“So, there are actually 13 people in the mayor’s race,” says Aaron Peskin to a group of about a dozen people gathered at a house party held by former District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell last Saturday night. Maxwell’s living room walls are painted a deep, buttery gold, giving the space the air of a high-ceilinged treasure chest. Maxwell’s two-year-old great-grandson works the edges of the room, showing off a toy car and a succession of partially nibbled crackers to any interested adults. “You can vote for up to 10 of them,” says Peskin.

“You are not supposed to say that!” says Maxwell, laughing. “You don’t give people all these choices!” Maxwell and Peskin go way back. They were both members of the class of 2000 — the first district supervisors elected in San Francisco since 1978. They worked together for more than a decade to shut down the Potrero Hill Mirant power plant. Peskin relaxed his opposition to chain stores to back Maxwell in bringing Lowe’s into the Bayview, and sided with her against environmentalists on rezoning Candlestick Point and the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard for businesses and housing.

“So,” continues Peskin, “the only way I win is that I have to get enough first-place votes to be in the top two. I need your first-place vote. Here is where the polls are right now: London is at the top of the heat in first-place votes, but at the bottom of the heat in second-place votes. If you like London, you like her, and if you don’t like her, you don’t like her. She is somewhere — depending on which poll you look at — between 23 and 26 percent of first-place votes.”

“Lurie and I are battling it out for the number two spot,” Peskin tells the group. “He and I are in the statistical margin of error of one another. He has spent 10 million dollars. You cannot turn on your TV set without seeing him. For every seven and a half of his ads, one of mine airs.” Peskin pauses. “Mine, however, are much better, because who else would swim from Alcatraz for a mayor’s race?”

The polls in the San Francisco mayoral race have been all over the place. The thing to remember, says Eric Jaye, a longtime consultant to political groups (including, in this election, a labor-backed PAC supporting Peskin), is this: “Most voters don’t pay any attention to all of this craziness until the ballot is sitting on their kitchen table.” Once they do, says Jaye, conservatives make up their minds quickly.  “Progressives and younger voters and renters — who have a lot to lose in this election — tend to make their decisions later.” Jaye has looked at every public poll and quite a few confidential ones. He has one conclusion: “This is a very, very close race.”

Peskin’s campaign has done its own polling, but “I never release a poll,” says Jim Stearns, long-time political consultant to many progressive campaigns — currently Peskin’s. “I’m not a big believer in letting everybody know what I know.”  Still, says Stearns, he has noticed one thing: An August Chronicle poll showed Peskin at 12 percent, which didn’t match other polls Stearns had seen. “I looked, and it was an entirely digital poll. They only emailed and texted — they didn’t call anyone.” Stearns went back to the only poll Peskin’s campaign commissioned, the one that Peskin used to make the decision as to whether he had a chance of winning the race.

The best (and most expensive) polls try to reach at least half the people via phone call, says Stearns. “That’s what we had done.” Out of the voters reached by phone, 58 percent had a favorable impression of Peskin, 22 percent didn’t like him one bit, and the rest were undecided or didn’t know who he was. Out of voters who responded by text, 24 percent had a favorable impression, and a whopping 67 percent hated him. 

“No other candidate was like that,” says Stearns. “I asked our pollsters, “Have you ever seen this before?” The pollsters said no. But Stearns has a theory. “We text a lot of voters. The YIMBYs are the first to jump up and be like, ‘Oh, fuck you! Stop texting me! Blah blah blah!’ Everybody else, if they don’t like a text, they just don’t respond to it. That’s why I think Aaron does badly in these all text polls. It’s a bunch of YIMBYs taking the poll.”

To really understand what a poll is telling you about a candidate, says Stearns, you have to see the whole thing, not just a summary or a memo. A political poll typically starts by asking a horse-race question at the beginning: Which candidates a voter is aware of, and how they would rank them.

Next is a series of questions, looking for positive and negative responses, as a way of testing which of a campaign’s messages are appealing or persuasive. “There’s a big difference between saying, ‘Do you think the city should provide needles to illegal drug dealers that are lying on our street addicted to fentanyl?’’” says Stearns. “Or, ‘Do you think we should have medically supervised, safe consumption sites so that people don’t overdose?’”

At the end, the poll asks the horse-race question again — and by then, the results have usually changed.  It’s important to know which set of candidate rankings are being released. The ones at the beginning? Or the ones at the end? And what questions are being asked along the way?

Also, says Eric Jaye, no campaign is going to release polling data that shows their candidate losing. There’s a lot of incentive to release the good stuff; rising numbers can get a candidate more news coverage, rally their supporters, or bring in donations.

A mayoral campaign that does release polling data, at least some of it, is Daniel Lurie’s. Earlier this month, Lurie’s campaign released a memo, written by David Binder Research, which described how a survey of 600 voters found the percentage who chose Farrell as their first choice had dropped from 24 to 19 percent in less than a month, with Lurie closing in on a three-way tie with Farrell and Breed, and ultimately becoming mayor in a ranked-choice voting simulation. 

Another Lurie campaign polling memo, written by FM3 Research and released in early September by Believe in SF Lurie for Mayor 2024, the PAC wing of Daniel Lurie’s mayoral campaign, found Lurie tied with Farrell at 19 percent. Both were behind Mayor Breed (36 percent), but in the simulation, Lurie also emerged victorious, due to being the least polarizing of all the candidates.

This is in no small part, FM3 concluded, because Lurie has never held elected office. Peskin, who has been in politics the longest, tops the memo’s ranking of most polarizing.

Aaron Peskin does not need a poll to tell him that he’s polarizing. To legislate the built environment in a space-constrained city is to alienate absolutely everybody at some point in time. The building built may shade a park or block a view or house people the neighbors don’t like. The building unbuilt may be a lost investment, an eyesore, housing someone desperately needs. If you have ideals, some people are going to think you’re a zealot. If you cut deals, others are going to think you’re a mercenary. As others have pointed out, Peskin’s campaign slogan is “We Need Aaron,” not “We Like Aaron.”  

At Maxwell’s, the conversation shifts from the police to homelessness, to technology, to corruption, to how the 2010 Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court ruling has changed local campaign finance, to public schools. It’s the kind of wide-ranging conversation, full of initial misunderstandings and personal stories and moments of insight, that would be impossible to summarize in any poll.

“Neither of us were thinking about winning,” says Maxwell, about the decision she and Peskin made to run for public office more than two decades ago. “But when you get called, then there’s something that you feel. And I always say, Aaron is shrewd. He does stuff. We need somebody like that on our side.” As Peskin leaves for another campaign event, Maxwell goes around the room, taking the hands of each of her guests, and looking them in the eyes. “Do I have your vote?” she says quietly, and listens for the answer.