Exclusive: Mayor Barry’s job approval rating drops but remains strong, new poll finds

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry has seen her approval rating drop 11 percentage points in one year but remains widely popular even after admitting to an affair with her former police bodyguard, according to a new Vanderbilt University poll.

The poll, released Tuesday and conducted Feb. 8-19, found 61 percent of Nashvillians approve of the job Barry is doing as mayor. That’s a fall from 72 percent who said the same in March 2017.

Nashvillians who said they disapprove of her job has doubled from 16 percent last year to 33 percent in the latest poll.

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The poll offers a glimmer of positive news for a mayor under fire, whose nearly two-year affair with her former bodyguard, Sgt. Rob Forrest, is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and a probe from the Metro Council.

But the survey was conducted too early to capture any possible effect from an affidavit made public last week that indicated the existence of nude photos that investigators believe are of Barry on the cellphone of Forrest. A search warrant for Barry’s phone cited two state crimes that could have been committed.

Still, Vanderbilt University political science professor John Geer, who helped oversee the poll for the school, said the numbers are unmistakably a strong sign for Barry.

“The mayor is amazingly popular,” Geer said. “Sixty-one percent is a good number for any elected official. And this data was all taken after the news broke about the affair.”

The poll, which has a margin of error of 4.6 percentage points, was a phone survey of 800 Nashville residents both on cell and land lines.

Difficult stretch even before affair news

Geer said he had expected Barry’s approval rating to have dropped to around 50 percent.

Even before the scandal broke, Barry, a 54-year-old Democrat, had gone through her most difficult stretch in office, having retreated on a push to end inpatient care at Nashville General Hospital and the redevelopment of the former Greer Stadium site with a mixed-use project Cloud Hill.

► More: Cloud Hill abandons controversial project for Nashville's Greer Stadium

She’s also faced pushback on her May 1 referendum to raise four taxes, including the sales tax, to pay for a $5.4 billion transit system.

“I would have expected it to drop anyways because of controversies over transit and Cloud Hill and Nashville General,” Geer said. “The fact that it’s still in the low 60s is pretty amazing.”

Geer said it’s possible that the mayor’s approval rating would have been lower if the poll was taken after the release of last week’s affidavit and search warrant.

“But the numbers didn’t move much with the affair, which was the big, big news,” Geer said. “So I don’t think the text messages/photo story was going to change these numbers. The city is doing well and the mayor is getting credit for that. And for whatever reason, people are discounting the personal stuff.

“It’s a sign that people are just not going to be moved by these things very much.”

How does Barry compare to predecessor?

Barry’s approval rating is now 5 percentage points lower than former Mayor Karl Dean’s when he left office in 2015 with 66 percent of Nashvillians saying they approved of his job performance.

In response to the doubling of the mayor’s disapproval rating, Geer said: “It’s because it was so low to begin with. You can focus on that, or the fact that’s she still 61 percent popular."

Barry’s strongest support is among African-Americans and women. Seventy-five percent of black Nashvillians polled said they approve of the mayor’s job performance, compared to 56 percent of white Nashvillians. Barry’s approval rating is at 64 percent among women and 59 percent among men.

Barry has more support from younger voters than older residents, with 64 percent of both Millennial and Generation X residents approving of the mayor’s job performance compared to 59 percent among Baby Boomers and 52 percent among seniors in their mid-70s or older.

The drop in the mayor’s popularity was across the board, according to the poll. Among Democrats, she went from 87 percent approval last year to 77 percent. She dropped a similar margin among Republicans, from 56 percent to 45 percent. Sixty-one percent of independent voters say they approve of her job, down from 66 percent last year.

Views on the mayor's 'personal life'

The poll did not directly ask for respondents’ opinions about the mayor’s affair.

Instead, the survey asked whether Barry’s “personal life” has an impact on shaping their opinion on the mayor. Only 20 percent said it had a big impact, with another 21 percent saying it has a moderate impact. Twenty-five percent said it has a small impact and 34 percent says it has no impact at all.

The numbers were reversed when pollsters asked about the personal life of President Donald Trump — perhaps a reflection of the Democratic leanings of Davidson County.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents said Trump’s personal life has a big impact on their opinions of him. Another 20 percent said it has a moderate impact. Only 15 percent said it has a small impact and 26 percent said it has no impact at all.

“Some of it’s going to be partisanship, sure,” Geer said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236, jgarrison@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Joeygarrison.