Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf popular with voters, poll shows

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf gives her "State of the City" address at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, October 28, 2015. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf gives her "State of the City" address at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, October 28, 2015. Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf popular with voters, poll shows 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has a 68 percent approval rating among registered voters, putting her well ahead of predecessor Jean Quan, according to a new Oakland Chamber of Commerce poll.

The poll comes a week after Schaaf delivered an upbeat State of the City speech that emphasized Oakland’s surging economy and lingering social disparities. The chamber’s hired firm, EMC Research, took phone surveys of 600 voters to show that overall, residents feel safer and more optimistic about the city’s leadership than they did last year.

Schaaf, who took office in January, has the highest approval rating for an Oakland mayor since 1999, when Jerry Brown held the post. Nine months into his mayoral term, Brown scored 82 percent favorability among voters. He’s now serving his fourth term as governor.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said Oakland is heading in the right direction, compared with 45 percent last year. The voters surveyed said their top priorities are boosting public schools, creating jobs and stamping out crime. Seventy-one percent said they thought the city’s economy had improved, compared with 61 percent last year.

The Chamber of Commerce has taken its “Pulse of Oakland” poll every year for nearly a decade, and the results often steer political campaigns in Oakland. Schaaf, a former member of the City Council, said she decided to run for mayor after seeing her high approval ratings in 2013.

“She’s a very popular mayor,” said Alex Evans, president of EMC research. Compared with Quan, he said, Schaaf is “stylistically more in tune with the city.”

Her sunny ratings also reflect how much voters mistrusted Quan, who scored abysmally on the same poll last year. Both the mayor and City Council had job ratings below 20 percent.

During her first 10 months in office, Schaaf has passed a $2.4 billion two-year budget, hired a city administrator and increased the city’s police force from 700 to 735 officers, with another 50 in training.

She has also confronted a spike in homicides, a dearth of affordable housing, and a May Day protest that ended in violent chaos, prompting Schaaf to institute a new nighttime street-protest crackdown that angered free speech advocates.

Evans said Schaaf’s high rating bodes well for her future. Quan’s ratings were low from about the time she stepped in, he said, and they continued to slump over the years.

The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan