Pensacola voters largely undecided on mayor's race, according to new poll

A recent poll paid for by Quint Studer shows that likely Pensacola voters were largely undecided on who to elect as the city's next mayor about three months before the election.

The survey showed 46 percent of likely voters were still undecided.

Out of four mayoral candidates — the poll was conducted before a fifth candidate, Jonathan Green, declared his candidacy May 21 — Commissioner Grover Robinson garnered the largest share of support, with 34 percent.

David Mayo had the second highest level of support, with 9 percent of likely voters saying they would elect him, according to the poll results. Drew Buchanan and Lawrence Powell each polled at 5 percent.

The poll also showed the top issues voters were serious about are tackling crime and drug problems, protecting the environment, lack of affordable health care and fixing stormwater and flood problems.

SEA Polling and Strategic Design, a Tampa-based polling firm, conducted the poll from May 10 to 15 and surveyed 280 registered voters who either had a history of voting in city elections or, if they were newly registered, said they always vote or almost always vote in city elections.

Fifty-five percent of the calls were placed to cellphones, and the questions were asked by live operators.

The poll had a margin of error rate of plus or minus 5.9 percentage points.

The poll also asked about Mayor Ashton Hayward's job performance, and 61 percent of respondents gave Hayward positive marks. When respondents were asked if they would vote to re-elect Hayward, 53 percent said they would vote for someone else.

Hayward has said he has no plans to run for a third-term.

Thomas Eldon, president of SEA Polling and Strategic Design, said he's been conducting polls in Florida since 1996. He did polling work for the St. Petersburg Times up to 2010 and said he now usually conducts polls for Democratic candidates.

Eldon said using live operators for polling tends to be more accurate than the more common practice of conducting polls with computers. It is illegal to call cellphones —which are increasingly people's only phones — using interactive voice response or IVR so those polls tend to only reach people who use landlines, limiting the potential sample size.

Eldon said in this poll, a pool of about 8,000 phone numbers was used to reach the 280 respondents.

"It's very difficult to get people of the phone nowadays," Eldon said.

Eldon said city elections are also tougher to poll because there are fewer voters, compared to other elections.

In the 2014 mayoral election, a total of 20,533 votes were cast, compared to the almost 100,000 votes cast county-wide for other state and county races in the same election.

Studer said he paid for the recent poll to understand how the public is thinking about issues. He said he is having a similar poll conducted county-wide.

"I thought it'd be a good chance to do a poll to see where we're at, particularly with this being an election year," Studer said.

The Pensacola mayoral election is on Aug. 28, and if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff on Nov. 6.

Although the poll asked about the mayor's race, most of the questions were focused on issues facing Pensacola.

Studer, who said he has conducted polls in Pensacola since 2005, paid for the poll personally, but he said he hopes the data from it and future polls can be used to develop a community plan that comes from citizens and business leaders rather than the government.

"It's really laying out how do we create a community platform," Studer said. "Certainly, CivicCon has been great influence on me seeing how engaged our community is. Even the speakers that come in say that when they come speak, they have never seen as large of attendance as they're seeing in Pensacola."

CivicCon is a partnership between the News Journal and the Studer Community Institute to bring nationally renowned experts to Pensacola to give talks on how to make the area a better place to live.

Studer said his biggest takeaways from the poll were that Pensacola voters were most serious about addressing crime and protecting the environment, which each scored an average rating of 3.94 on a scale of 1 to 5.

The poll also showed only 27 percent of voters thought there was too much focus on downtown while 68 percent agreed that "a vibrant downtown is good for the entire Escambia County economy and improves the quality of life for everyone."

Studer said he plans to conduct polls throughout the rest of the year to gather data on what the community thinks.

"I just think the average community citizen gets shut out on influence and decision making, and our goal is really to have them create a community platform," Studer said.

Jim Little can be reached at jwlittle@pnj.com or 850-208-9827.

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