Mayor 2012: In new poll, Brady leads Hales, Smith, and (surprise!) Tre Arrow

Kari Chisholm

Last night, SurveyUSA and KATU released their second poll in the race for Mayor of Portland.

As compared to the first poll, back in November, Eileen Brady gained two points (to 25%) to extend her lead over Charlie Hales, who dropped three points to 16%, and Jefferson Smith, who dropped four points to 10%.

SurveyUSA also asked respondents about tree-sitting activist and convicted arsonist Tre Arrow, who was supported by 7% of respondents; real estate broker Bill Dant, who got 3%; and Max Brumm, who got 2%. In addition to 28% who were undecided, another 8% declared their support for "another candidate". It's worth noting that in 2000, Arrow ran for Congress against Earl Blumenauer and won 6% of the vote.

SurveyUSA notes that "any outcome is possible". Here's some interesting notes from the crosstabs:

• There's not much of a gender gap for the candidates, except Smith, who gets 14% from men, and 6% from women.

• Hales leads with 19% among the 18-34 age group, while Brady leads with 30% among the 65+ age group. Smith sees his highest total, 13%, among the 50-64 age group.

• 45% of the electorate says the economy is "most important", while 25% say it's education. Those audiences don't diverge much from the overall breakdown. However, among the 7% that say public transportation is tops, Smith nearly doubles his share to 19%. Among the 7% that say homelessness is the top issue, Brady jumps to 35%.

• Partisan affiliation doesn't seem to make much difference, though Brady underperforms among Republicans (20%). Among the 17% who call themselves independent voters, Tre Arrow is in third with 12% behind Brady (26%) and Hales (14%), and ahead of Smith (9%) and "another candidate" (9%).

• Ideological identification isn't a big factor, except that Brady underperforms among conservatives with just 15% of the vote, and overperforms among moderates with 30%. Hales gets his best showing among conservatives with 19%. Smith has his best showing among liberals, with 12%.

Of course, it's important to be careful about over-using the crosstab data. The numbers inside some of these cells are small enough to drive the margin-of-error very high. Overall, the margin was +/- 4.2% on a respondent base of 555 likely primary voters.

Here's a rundown of all previous polling:

Update: Tim Hibbits of DHM Research, the pollster who conducted the Portland Business Alliance poll, writes in to tell me that the PBA poll back in November did not use "any other credible candidate" as the poll language:

One clarification; the language used in that poll was not ‘any other credible candidate’; we’d never use language like that in a head to head survey. The language was ‘would you vote for Hales, Brady, Smith, or one of the other candidates’. Word credible was not in the poll question language.

The original reporting on "any other credible candidate" came from Willamette Week's Nigel Jaquiss. It's unclear why his reporting included that phrasing.

By Kari Chisholm Feb. 28, 2012