2025 Boston Mayoral Race

my god the bike lane
KCasiglio said:
Wu up 43-29 over Kraft.
Wu job approval is 41% to 38% disapprove
Wu at 57% favorable to 35% unfavorable
Kraft at 27% favorable to 24% unfavorable
57% say city headed in right direction

52% approve of the Boston Trust Act, 31% disapprove (sanctuary city policy)
51% say the city cannot accommodate more migrants seeking sanctuary

White Stadium redevelopment has 53% support, 22% oppose, and even Kraft supporters have more support than opposition

48% say there are too many bike lanes in Boston, 35% say there are enough, 17% say too few. There is a massive split here between Wu and Kraft voters:
Among Wu voters it's 46% enough, 29% too few, 25% too many
Among Kraft voters it's 69% too many, 24% enough, 7% too few

61% say the MBTA is headed in the right direction
46% say Boston Schools are headed in the right direction
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Welp, looks like Wu needs to ever so gently back away from the bike lane question. It’s the one place she’s underwater. Such a stupid wedge issue but many a “good” politician has been rolled for less. Pretty clearly her race to lose since Kraft hasn’t done anything to bolster his image since his launch.
 
Justbuildit said:
my god the bike lane


Welp, looks like Wu needs to ever so gently back away from the bike lane question. It’s the one place she’s underwater. Such a stupid wedge issue but many a “good” politician has been rolled for less. Pretty clearly her race to lose since Kraft hasn’t done anything to bolster his image since his launch.
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Seems like exactly the type of issue that neither candidate should want to make the race about. Phrased a different way, Kraft has made "too many bike lanes" and "stop white stadium" two central parts of his campaign, and only 48% and 22% respectively seem to agree with him on that.
 
KCasiglio said:
Seems like exactly the type of issue that neither candidate should want to make the race about. Phrased a different way, Kraft has made "too many bike lanes" and "stop white stadium" two central parts of his campaign, and only 48% and 22% respectively seem to agree with him on that.
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Yeah. It's not a hot issue at all. People may have a general opinion on where they land, but there's not much intensity behind the picks. Which makes it all the more baffling why Kraft has made that arguably the 1-2 most central issues of his campaign. It's going to fail miserably to bring the undecideds to his side, because it's just not going to light a fire under people. Wu doesn't have to make many adjustments at all to win despite slight unfavorables on the bike lane issue, because Kraft's hyper-focus on it just isn't going to be motivational.

I wonder (actually, not that much) how the Globe is going to contort these numbers into a pretzel. They so desperately want a hot horse race here to sell some papers, and it's just not developing that way in the early going. Endless stories about White Stadium controversies are doing nothing to move the numbers closer into actual controversy, and the bike lanes (as much as these numbers will be hyped as a problem for Wu) being a low-intensity issue means there's less than appears to those numbers.
 
Just to get my cards on the table, I am very much on the same page as most people on this board. However, I happen to be a constituent of the good Mr. Flynn, and have been to many neighborhood meetings over the last few years. The amount of grievance-filled unprompted comments I hear from my neighbors has really caught me off guard and made me worry how much of the national climate will permeate local issues like the mayoral race. I have seen people yell in public at local politicians about housing migrants and heard more than a few unironic claims of this being "our" city with regards to affordable housing and parking.

I agree that bike lanes are unimportant and unlikely to be a catalyst for activism, but one of my biggest takeaways of the last ~10 years is that people are awful at separating things that annoy them from things that are actually important. The best (worst) politicians have been able to use this to their advantage and ride that grievance wave to office. Boston is different that the US as a whole, it's an engaged city with deep ties across institutions, but there is absolutely a lane for someone to hippy-punch their way to a victory. I don't think Kraft has the skills to do it, but that simmering resentment is absolutely there.
 
Not a huge surprise but Jim Davis made a $1,000 contribution to Kraft(the max). I can’t imagine he won’t try to buy this one like he attempted for AEG in 21.
 
Kraft down 14 points to Wu at the outset of the campaign seems like... a pretty good result for Kraft.
 
SteelyTom said:
Kraft down 14 points to Wu at the outset of the campaign seems like... a pretty good result for Kraft.
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28% undecided. He would need to run the table almost completely on turning out those votes to make up the deficit, and that's a very tall order with the way his campaign's signature issues are polling in that same snapshot and the general lack of serious self-inflicted gaffes from the better-known Wu. His campaign would need a full reboot...already, just a couple weeks in...on the issues he's pressing to be able to produce enough votes to even make it close. Don't read too much into the head-to-head taken at a date where almost nobody is paying attention...it's how his top issues poll that foretell a lot of problems for him going forward.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
28% undecided. He would need to run the table almost completely on turning out those votes to make up the deficit, and that's a very tall order with the way his campaign's signature issues are polling in that same snapshot and the general lack of serious self-inflicted gaffes from the better-known Wu. His campaign would need a full reboot...already, just a couple weeks in...on the issues he's pressing to be able to produce enough votes to even make it close. Don't read too much into the head-to-head taken at a date where almost nobody is paying attention...it's how his top issues poll that foretell a lot of problems for him going forward.
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Kraft will need much, much more than the anti-bike lane vote to get traction.

Mostly, I'm surprised that the largely anodyne Wu, with the cops behind her, a good 'right track' number etc., is below fifty per cent.
 
SteelyTom said:
Mostly, I'm surprised that the largely anodyne Wu, with the cops behind her, a good 'right track' number etc., is below fifty per cent.
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It's 8+ months out from Election Day, that's why. "Undecided" is a large percentage of people simply not paying any attention to anything political yet, and aren't going to register a preference (regardless of who they're ultimately inclined to vote for) until they've paid some attention. Menino used to have some mediocre early polling, too, giving rivals an illusion that they had a chance upon jumping into the race. It never ended up mattering, because the status-quo voters would always come home to him by the time it was summer and people were starting to pay some actual attention to the campaigns.

So you have to dive deeper at what issues might get them to eventually pay some attention. Especially the issues that run "hot" with passion, if you want to get any sense of what they'd be willing to pay attention to this early. Kraft's top slate of issues just don't generate much passion, and it's very hard to see how enough of those undecideds are going to gravitate to him if he doesn't get a much better set of issues. This was going to be a very hard race to win to begin with unless Wu shot herself majorly in the foot because that's just how incumbency works in Boston, but to even get close you have to galvanize voters on at least one or two signature issue where the incumbent is underwater. This polling indicates that galvanizing issue hasn't been located yet, and if it's to be found Kraft sure isn't poking around in the right places in his early going.
 
SteelyTom said:
Kraft will need much, much more than the anti-bike lane vote to get traction.

Mostly, I'm surprised that the largely anodyne Wu, with the cops behind her, a good 'right track' number etc., is below fifty per cent.
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The cop endorsement came after the polling was done. But it's things like getting such endorsements that are far more telling than any polls at this point in the race anyway.
 
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