No wonder Ernie went negative.

Public Policy Polling is out with new data on the October 9 Cary and Raleigh elections. The front-runners: Harold Weibrecht (right) in Cary by almost 2-to-1 over incumbent Mayor Ernie McAlister. Given the TV attack ads McAlister’s been running, that’s maybe not such a shocker. And in the Raleigh at-large City Council race, incumbent Russ Stephenson (left) is ahead with almost half the respondents (49%) making him their first or second choice. Mary-Ann Baldwin is second. More below.

About the polls:

Detailed numbers should be posted to the PPP website shortly. Treat them with caution, especially in the Raleigh District A & B races, where the polling samples are very small; ditto the District 3 & 6 Wake school board races. About all you can conclude from any of those four samples is, the races could be very close. (Update: Ditto Cary. Also a small sample. But the margin there suggests that, while the races could be close, they probably aren’t.) And even in the at-large Raleigh race, remember that these low-turnout local races are notoriously tough to poll. On the other hand, PPP is a local outfit with a good track record in the Triangle — remember, for example, that its polls showed the District A Raleigh Council race as a tossup two years ago when everybody else thought it was a walkover for Tommy Craven. Turned out to be a tossup. They also called the at-large race correctly two years ago. So, with all that said:

Cary: Challenger Harold Weinbrecht is leading Mayor Ernie McAlister by 59%-33%. And at-large incumbent Erv Portman is leading challenger Tommy Byrd by an even bigger margin, 59%-24%. The front-runners are the choice of most progressives in Cary and were endorsed by the Indy.

Raleigh: Russ Stephenson was the first choice of 33% of respondents and the second choice of 16%, for a total of 49%. Baldwin was 24% first, 16% second for 40% total. Paul Anderson was third with 31% total (18% first, 13% second). Helen Tart’s total was 11%, David Williams 10%, William Best 5%. Stephenson and Tart were endorsed by the Indy.
To win outright on October 9, the at-large candidates need 25% of the total vote. Only Stephenson is close to that — you take his 49% and divide by two to get his percentage of the total. If he’s the only one to make it, looks like Baldwin and Anderson would be in a two-person runoff on November 6. If two candidates make it, there is no runoff. If nobody makes it, it’s a four-way runoff November 6, meaning Tart, Williams or Best — one of them — would be included.

This entry was posted from Bob Geary on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 10:55 am and is filed under City Hall, Wake's Sake, Cary Cares, Around Raleigh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.