Rahm Has Big Lead in Polls
Politico reports:
Rahm Emanuel is headed toward victory in the race for Chicago mayor, a new poll of the city’s likely voters suggests.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, 54 percent of voters surveyed by Chicago’s ABC affiliate WLS-TV said they plan to vote for the former White House chief of staff — almost four times the percentage of respondents who said they would support his closest competitor. If he is able to capture more than 50 percent of the vote in the Feb. 22 general election, Emanuel would avoid a runoff and replace Richard M. Daley as mayor.
The poll shows Emanuel with his biggest lead yet, with former city schools official Gery Chico trailing for a distant second with the support of 14 percent of those surveyed. Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) had been Emanuel’s closest opponent in polls conducted throughout January, but has dropped to fourth place in the race, with the support of 6 percent of voters, also trailing City Clerk Miguel del Valle, who got the support of 8 percent of Chicagoans.
It is the first major poll to be conducted since the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 27 that Emanuel was eligible to stay on the ballot despite spending much of 2009 and 2010 in Washington working for President Barack Obama. Emanuel was endorsed by former President Bill Clinton at a rally and has been running a campaign ad featuring Obama’s praise of him from a speech last fall.
Although the former senator was endorsed by Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) when he dropped out of the race in December, and has tried to fashion herself the consensus candidate for the city’s black voters, she has not managed to break through with that constituency. Emanuel leads with the support of 53 percent of African-Americans, the poll found.
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