A version of this story first appeared in the Politics Report on May 30, 2026.
For anyone looking around San Diego and seeing a city headed in the wrong direction and wondering whether maybe they were crazy and it wasn’t all that bad and other people didn’t really see it that way: Wonder no more.
This chart is so staggering that it really is hard to find the words.
The chart shows the results of a running poll conducted by Public Dynamics and Pulse Decision Science on behalf of the Municipal Employees Association, obtained by the Politics Report.
It tells quite a story.
In June 2020, 32 percent of San Diegans felt the city was on the wrong track. It doesn’t get much better than that. But the percentage has been rising slowly and steadily ever since. By last September, the percentage of wrong trackers had grown to 49 percent. That’s substantial and it didn’t speak well of the Democrats running the city.
That was nothing.
In the last eight months, wrong trackers climbed a mountain. In May 2026, they made up 69 percent.
There’s one obvious reason that comes out of the poll itself.
The poll asked respondents to identify, in an open-ended way, the biggest issues facing the city. The pollsters then tagged those into separate buckets.
Homelessness has tended to rank in the top two or three among people’s biggest concerns. In this most recent poll it ranked fourth.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean people’s concerns over homelessness have gone down, said Ryan Clumpner, who worked on the poll.
It may simply mean people’s concerns over homelessness continue unabated, but now they also have new concerns: like the city’s budget, which ranked second. That hasn’t been a big concern in the last few years, but it is now.
That at least partially explains why the percentage of people dissatisfied with the city’s direction has grown so much. The city faces multiple problems. Residents don’t feel any of them are being seriously addressed. And in the meantime, new concerns are being added to the situation.
This poll also tells another story — in a way more fascinating and surprising than the first. It relates the question of taxes and fees that has recently dominated City Hall.
The people (many of them Republican) behind the recently-aborted efforts to repeal the city’s trash fee and Balboa parking fees have been telling the story that San Diegans are straining under the weight of new taxes and fees and ready to revolt.
City Hall politicians (most of them Democrats) have seemed to accept this narrative, as well. Council President Joe LaCava and some other leaders seem to have received the message that citizens will brook no new fees and taxes.
But only six percent of people polled listed taxes and fees as a major issue facing the city.
The poll asked other questions which shed light on this.
A full 50 percent of people said they would pay more in taxes if they knew they would get better services. Only 29 percent answered in the inverse.
Another chart also showed people’s support for new revenue.
Fifty-five percent said billionaires and corporations aren’t paying their fair share and that they should be taxed more for improved city services.
“The story that the business community is telling — that we’ve gone too far on taxes and fees — is not how people actually feel,” Clumpner said. “Part of the reason so many people feel the city is on the wrong track is that leaders are taking away the wrong message, which is that they have overreached. The answer is actually that they haven’t reached far enough to solve the things that people expect them to solve.”
The anti-tax-and-fees crowd was having a big moment, as I wrote previously. But the recent deal that locked in a trash fee and killed Balboa parking fees has now defused it.
City Hall leaders have a new moment and a cleaner slate to tell a different story for what they want for San Diego. It will be interesting to see how these poll results inform their vision.