Mayoral runoff poll results little changed

The needle hasn’t moved much in a weekly poll that shows Mayor Rahm Emanuel with a double-digit lead over opponent Jesus “Chuy” Garcia with only a few days left until the runoff election April 7.

The poll, conducted Saturday with 904 participants, showed 47.6 percent would vote for Emanuel while 34.2 percent would vote for Garcia and 18.3 percent were undecided.

In a poll conducted Friday that did not give “undecided” as an option, 57.9 percent chose Emanuel and 42.1 percent went with Garcia.

The numbers didn’t move much from the previous week, when Emanuel garnered 48.5 percent, Garcia pulled in 32.1 percent and undecided voters accounted for 18.4 percent.

In the previous week’s poll in which “undecided” was not an option, 55.8 percent of pollers chose Emanuel and 44.2 percent chose Garcia.

The polls were conducted by Ogden and Fry, which pointed out in an analysis of the data it has collected that Emanuel has slowly been pulling away from Garcia since the municipal elections.

Analysis also points to the “How will he pay for it?” slogan that the Emanuel campaign has used against Garcia in explaining Emanuel’s lead.

“Garcia finally is getting on TV, but after much damage was caused by the Emanuel attack ads,” according to Ogden and Fry.

“Garcia will need his offer to eliminate red-light cameras or new messages to resonate with voters to make the race more competitive,” the analysis stated. “Garcia does have the advantage that Hispanic voters under-poll. The Garcia campaign claims they are under-represented by 10-14 points, however eight of the nine wards with fewer early voters are Hispanic majority wards.”