With the primary election less than two weeks away, a new poll in the mayor’s race shows a four-way statistical tie for second place between Joe Mallahan, James Donaldson, Jan Drago, and Mike McGinn. Mayor Greg Nickels leads them by a dozen points, though a large number of voters remain undecided. Only two candidates will move on into November’s general election.
Poll Results
Nickels: 23
Mallahan: 11
Donaldson: 10
Drago: 9
McGinn: 9
Undecided: 37
Over on the bag tax front, the poll shows that Referendum 1 is losing by a healthy margin, 55-41. According to the crosstabs we can blame the men for that. Women are evenly split on the issue, but men favor getting rid of the tax by a count of 62-34.
The poll, done by the University of Washington, surveyed 600 likely voters over the last seven days and has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.
Once the voters become informed about the drinking habits of the candidates look for real shake-out to occur.
They’re just banning plastic bags next year if the fee fails, you know.
What– you didn’t think the City Council would want to be left holding the bag on this, did you? Nope, here comes a real honest-to-goodness ban, following the footsteps of Edmonds.
i think this shows that we all gotta start spreading the word about mcginn a bit more…..
i mean, cud you imagine nickels vs mallahan??!?!
Damn men!
Bummer about Bag FEE…. Green Bag Fee… ahem.
Damn men indeed! FWIW, I oppose a tax and do not oppose a ban, so #2 doesn’t scare me.
Why do opponents of the green bag fee oppose the fee but support a ban? That position has always confused us. Anyone able to explain?
Men are vastly more conservative in general, and this rarely gets talked about. Gore and Kerry would have won easily, and Proposition 8 would have failed easily if men voted like women.
8
mccain would have won easily if women voted like men
apparently men are vastly more worried about money than women.
Both adult males in my house voted for McGinn and against the Bag Tax on the Poor.
Come back when you’re ready to ban plastic bags like grownups, ok?
Bag fee people robo-called me on vacation in a particularly great family moment.
Any ballot issue that uses robocallers loses my vote.
@7: From polling analysis, it’s simple: people understand that plastic bags are bad, and would certainly go along with a ban, but it becomes a problem when you conflate plastic bags (bad) with paper bags (fine) and a fee(bad). It sounds like the city isn’t missing an opportunity to make some money and they haven’t clearly explained what they’re going to do with it.
People are willing to accept a strictly environmental move, but they have a hard time with anything that is seemingly greenwashed. This is why Roads and Transit failed but Prop 1 passed. Get rid of the fee and limit the scope to plastic bags and it would pass.
Don’t the plastic bags get mostly recycled anyway? If so, what’s the huge issue? I know I re-use AND recycle mine.
I can’t believe Nickles has that big of a lead- let us just hope that the undecided people are really taking their time to make the right choice, eh?
@11, McGinn is a big supporter of the Bag Fee.
@13, paper bags are even worse than plastic when you factor in the pollution coming from the paper production. In places like SF that tried a fee, but had to do a ban after a similar effort from the American Chemistry Council to block them, found that banning plastic by itself let to big problems from all the extra paper bag use.
@12, the bag campaign hasn’t used robocallers. WTF?
@17 – don’t care, friends can disagree on this. I still like Mike.
Actually, paper bags have a higher rate of reuse – remember, it’s reduce reuse recycle – but then you probably buy water in disposable plastic bottles you buy when you drive to the cool grocery store 20 miles away, right?
They polled 600 likely voters with land lines. Cell phones are not included in polls.