New Polls in San Francisco Mayor’s Race Show Peskin and Lurie Surging

Updated at 12:50 p.m. Monday

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and nonprofit executive Daniel Lurie are neck-and-neck in the San Francisco mayoral race, each with 25% of voters’ first-choice picks, according to new polling released Monday.

The poll released by Peskin’s campaign and Public Policy Polling, taken from Oct. 18–19 among 621 likely voters, represents a major boost for Peskin, a progressive who has trailed his moderate opponents in the race so far. It also arrives the same day that a poll by the San Francisco Chronicle shows Lurie in a tight race with Breed, each with 27% of first-choice votes, and Peskin in third place with 21% of voters’ first picks.

“These numbers don’t surprise me because they reflect the interactions I’ve been having on the street, in every neighborhood in the city. People are warm and engaged, and really you can feel the excitement growing — it’s like people are waking up to the fact that this election will have real consequences,” Peskin said in a statement. “And they want to be a part of positive change that doesn’t tear the city down.”

The polls tell a different story from earlier polling that had Breed leading in first-choice votes. And it comes amid an increasingly tense — and expensive — race. This week, venture capitalist Ron Conway donated $100,000 to a political action committee called Residents Opposing Aaron Peskin for Mayor 2024. The Association of Realtors gave $50,000 to the same PAC to defeat Peskin, who is advocating for increased rent control across the city.

Meanwhile, Lurie, who is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, has given millions to his own campaign, eclipsing all of his opponents so far in total dollars raised.

“Daniel’s favorability rating has continued to rise above that of his opponents, while [Mark] Farrell’s has now dropped below Mayor Breed’s. It can’t be emphasized enough how important Daniel’s broad base of favorability is heading into the final two weeks as his opponents desperately launch a barrage of over-the-top attacks,” Tyler Law, campaign consultant for Lurie, said in an email.

The Public Policy poll, which had a 4% margin of error, did not tabulate which candidate would ultimately come out on top. The Chronicle’s poll, however, shows Lurie pulling ahead after the ranked-choice calculation, leading Breed 56% to 44% in the final round of vote counting.

A third poll released on Monday, from the moderate political organizing group Together SF Action and LDI Research, is more consistent with earlier polling showing Breed in the lead with 25% of first-place votes — down one point from the group’s earlier October poll. Lurie and Mark Farrell, a former supervisor and interim mayor, were tied with 21% of first-choice votes, followed by Peskin with 20% — up one point from the prior poll.

“Our campaign continues to convert voters into committed #1 votes at a rapid pace, and the energy on the ground has been overwhelmingly in our favor,” Farrell wrote in a campaign email on Monday morning. “Every day, I hear from San Franciscans who are ready for a leader with proven experience, someone who can make the tough choices and deliver the changes our city desperately needs.”

Eric Jaye, founder of Storefront Political Media, said the dueling polls show that it’s still anybody’s race to win.

“There is a very clear signal, and that is that this race is tied. You have three separate polls all showing the leading candidates are within the margin of error. We have a very tight mayor’s race, and it will come down to the last few weeks and which candidate has the best closing argument.”

San Francisco uses ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to choose up to 10 different candidates in order of preference, unlike traditional elections in which voters pick a single candidate.

After all of the first-choice votes for each candidate are counted, any candidate with a majority wins the race. If there is no clear winner in the first round, the candidate with the least first-choice votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to the next candidate on each voter’s ranking. This process repeats until a candidate reaches a majority.

“What is exciting to us is that our trends show Breed and Farrell dropping and Lurie and Peskin gaining, and we think that is a great set-up for us because Aaron has spent his lifetime working for everyday San Franciscans,” said Jim Stearns, a consultant for Peskin’s campaign.

Stearns said the campaign’s last internal poll from about three weeks ago — before the Chronicle endorsed Lurie — had Breed at 23% of voters’ first-choice picks, Lurie at 21% and Peskin at 17%.

“I’m not surprised by Peskin’s momentum. His base of voters, who are renters and more progressive, have a tendency to decide late,” said Jaye. “The most conservative voters are early deciders, and Farrell coalesced that base already.”

Meanwhile, Lurie has maintained a steady hold on voters’ second-choice picks and has recently seen an uptick in first-place votes also.

“Daniel Lurie by virtue of his very aggressive personal spending has created a base for himself, and also a number of second- and third-choice voters he’s counting on to lift him up to Room 200,” said Jaye. “The challenge he has is that in San Francisco mayoral campaigns, voters tend to break out into their key allegiances later into the campaign.”

The Public Policy poll released Monday also found that 41% of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Peskin and 62% said they had an unfavorable opinion of Breed.

Anand Singh, a lead negotiator for Unite Here Local 2, representing 15,000 food service and hotel workers throughout the Bay Area and in San Francisco, said the latest polling reflects some of the energy he is hearing from members. The union has endorsed Peskin for its No.1 pick for mayor, followed by Supervisor Ahsha Safaí second and Breed third.

“This is heartening to see. It tells the story we have been seeing on the ground with our members,” Singh told KQED. “Aaron is trying to advance protections for renters and rent control. Those are bread and butter-issues that impact our workers who live on the edge and can be priced out of the city depending on their next paycheck. Aaron has been most responsive to working people.”