Poll: Wide-open race for Bloomington mayor with a month to go until early voting starts
With just a month to go before early voting starts for the May 2 Democratic Party primary, a poll conducted from Wednesday through Friday of this week shows that any of the three candidates could easily wind up being the Democratic Party’s nominee.
No Republican candidate is running for mayor.
Among the survey respondents who chose one of the three candidates, here’s how they sorted out: Kerry Thomson (18 percent); Sandberg (15 percent); and Griffin (9 percent).
The margin of error of the poll was +/- 4 percent.
But well over half (58 percent) of those who completed the survey said they’re still not sure who they’ll vote for.
The large percentage of undecided voters, together with the small pointwise differences between candidates, indicates that, right now at least, any of the three candidates could prevail in the Democratic Party’s primary election.
The poll results summarize the completed survey responses from 594 people, who were drawn from a list of registered voters in the city of Bloomington, and who indicated that they plan to vote in the Democratic Party’s primary election. The poll used a text-to-web methodology
The poll was conducted for The B Square by Public Policy Polling, a company based in North Carolina.
The poll included some other questions to gauge voter sentiments towards each candidate alone, as well as satisfaction with other elected city officials.
Probably accounting for many of the “not sure” answers on candidate preference is the fact that a majority of voters also answered “not sure” when asked whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each candidate.
The lowest percentage of “not sure” answers for any candidate on the question of favorable-unfavorable opinion was Sandberg, with 58 percent. For all three candidates, among those survey respondents who had an opinion one way or another, the percentage with favorable opinions was greater than those with unfavorable opinions.
Thomson had the lowest percentage of respondents who had an unfavorable opinion of her. She also had the highest percentage of respondents who were not sure, with 66 percent.
The poll also tried to gauge attitudes towards job performance by incumbent mayor John Hamilton and the city council as a group.
Two-thirds of poll respondents had an opinion about Hamilton’s job performance. Almost 40 percent of respondents said they disapprove of Hamilton’s performance, and 27 percent of respondents said they approve of it.
About half of poll respondents had an opinion about the city council’s job performance. About 20 percent of respondents approved of the city council’s job performance, while about 30 percent did not approve of the city council’s job performance.
The poll also included a question about President Joe Biden’s performance. About 83 percent of respondents had some opinion about Biden. About two thirds approved of Biden’s job performance (67 percent) while about 16 percent disapproved of Biden’s job performance.
Here are links to profiles compiled by The B Square for each mayoral candidate:
Those profiles include loads of links to original document filings, plus information from the League of Women Voters.
The B Square’s mayoral candidate profiles include the following links to the League of Women Voters profiles for each candidate.
Links to League of Women Vote 411 profiles
Some voters got their first chance to see all three Democratic Party mayoral candidates in the same place at the same time last week at Aver’s Public House.
Several more candidate forums have been scheduled over the coming weeks.
The League of Women Voters has compiled a list of upcoming candidate forums.
Early voting starts on April 4.
