Scott Wiener, Connie Chan have a tight race for Congress, polls show 

New polling data suggests that the race between State Sen. Scott Wiener and Supervisor Connie Chan for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress could be very close. 

Just two months ago, Wiener finished the June primary with 40.7 percent of the vote, and Chan with 29.7 percent.

Since then, Wiener’s lead has narrowed considerably, according to two polls shared with Mission Local.

One poll sponsored by Chan’s campaign found Wiener ahead by 5 percent, 45 percent to 40 percent, with 11 percent of voters undecided. 

The second, sponsored by Fair Housing, a committee supporting the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act, found Wiener at 39 percent of the 509 San Francisco voters who were polled, and Chan at 38 percent; 23 percent were undecided. 

Julie Edwards, Chan’s campaign spokesperson, said the polls show Chan “building momentum every day.”

Joe Arellano, Wiener’s campaign spokesperson, said that Chan’s popularity was unlikely to last. “Connie Chan should enjoy this moment,” Arellano wrote. “Once San Francisco voters learn that her entire career is built on stopping progress and making housing unaffordable, her poll numbers will sink faster than the Giants’ season.”

A political consultant who supports Wiener, however, said that, based on several polls, the race between Chan and Wiener was looking tight.

Some of Chan’s new support could come from the voters who allied with Saikat Chakrabarti, who finished third in the primary and endorsed Chan in June. However, while Chakrabarti shares a progressive-leaning voter base with Chan, he was also popular with some young urbanists who may be open to Wiener.

Jim Stearns, a political consultant who has donated to Chan’s campaign, also pointed to the large number of undecided respondents in the second poll.

“There’s really two kinds of undecided in this race,” said Stearns — the Chakrabarti voters waiting to make a decision between Chan and Wiener, and “the more conservative, Trump-voting Republicans” who voted for more conservative candidates in the primary, but might choose not to vote in the general.

Those conservative candidates’ voters, said Stearns, may be key to both candidates’ paths to victory.

“It is a question that’s facing both campaigns,” said Stearns. “What role do the hard-right voters play in this?” 

The poll sponsored Chan’s campaign and conducted by Lake Research Partners polled 500 likely voters and had a margin of error of 4.4 percent. It was conducted from July 14 to July 19 in English and Cantonese and included an oversample of 100 Chinese American likely voters.

Lake Research Partners concluded, based on the poll results, that Chan has gained more than twice as much new support as Wiener.

The poll sponsored by Fair Housing was conducted from June 26 to June 27, and was citywide, meaning that its geographic area included around 10 percent of San Francisco that’s not in Pelosi’s district and will not be voting in this race.

The area of the city that the poll included — mainly the city’s extreme southeast and some adjacent areas, is largely pro-Chan because of its large working-class Chinese population. But the poll was only undertaken in English, meaning that monolingual Chinese voters who are likely to be Chan supporters are not included in its results.

The second poll also shows early, strong support for San Francisco’s two affordable housing measures on the November ballot. Among the respondents, 67 percent support the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act, which would dedicate existing transfer-tax revenue to affordable housing and rental assistance, and 58 percent back the Housing Trust Fund Expansion Act, which would increase San Francisco’s annual affordable housing fund from $52 million to $125 million. Both measures require a simple majority to pass.