While candidates are willing to offer peeks at those kind of numbers, they aren't often willing to share all their results, much less the survey questions that elicited them. After all, unless political consultants are polling for a saint like Ichiro, they need to keep the raw data obscured from the public so they can make the numbers mean, well, anything. For example, Drago probably wasn't so thrilled when we reported another stat from her poll--only eight percent of voters said they'd cast votes for her! ["Five to Four," Josh Feit, May 31.] Drago dropped all talk of a mayoral run on June 12.
It's telling then, that Greg Nickels' polling firm, Evans/McDonough, isn't so shy. In fact, the consultants were willing to let local reporters sit down and peruse the entire poll. With good reason: No matter how you slice Nickels' polling, the King County Council guy is posting the best numbers of all the major candidates. (He led in Drago's poll, too.) Get this: In a June 14-17 poll of 500 Seattleites, 39 percent of voters picked Nickels, while 21 went for Schell and 20 for Mark "Republican for Mayor" Sidran. (The poll showed that Nickels' rival Charlie Chong mostly siphoned votes from Sidran.)
Nickels' impressive showing came after the poll spun both positive and negative messages about the candidates, testing hot-button issues like Sound Transit and the WTO. The questions gave an evenhanded portrayal of all the candidates, praising and bashing them alike.
Meanwhile, when you compare the poll's aforementioned final vote count to the poll's preliminary tally--before any candidate spin was thrown into the mix--things look even more promising for Nickels. The poll's first cut had Nickels leading the pack 28 percent to Schell's 26 and Sidran's 18. This means Nickels jumped 11 percentage points after the poll simulated the give and take of warring campaign messages. Schell dropped five points and Sidran remained static. Conclusion: Nickels has the most to gain from the upcoming campaign season.
There was, however, a little bad news for Nickels. The pollsters asked voters to rate in importance a set of 11 issues likely to show up on the campaign stump--everything from traffic to race to light rail. Light-rail diehard Nickels should take note that supporting light rail landed ninth on the list. In a bigger zinger for Sidran, public civility ranked a lowly 10th.
