This post originally appeared in the Oct. 30 Morning Report. Subscribe to the Morning Report here.
In the first-ever Voice Poll, we tested two political races along with a general poll of the region about people’s takes on different issues. And one of the more fascinating results is in the numbers about how people feel about the direction the city and county are headed and whom they support to lead those agencies.
In the city of San Diego, survey respondents who thought the city was headed in the wrong direction overwhelmingly preferred City Councilwoman Barbara Bry as their choice for mayor (44 percent for Bry, compared with 26 percent for Gloria).
And respondents who thought the city was headed in the right direction preferred Assemblyman Todd Gloria (44 percent for Gloria, compared with 25 percent for Bry).
This is a bit odd considering Bry is in city government now and Gloria isn’t. But she has been running as an outsider and challenger to the existing establishment.
And the county: The same phenomenon occurred in the county District 3 race. Respondents who felt the county was headed in the wrong direction preferred the incumbent, Supervisor Kristin Gaspar to her challenger, Terra Lawson-Remer (48 percent for Gaspar, compared with 28 percent for Lawson-Remer).
And on the other side, if respondents felt the county was headed in the right direction, they somewhat strangely prefer to switch representatives (50 percent of them support Lawson-Remer and 23 percent of them support Gaspar).
Gaspar has positioned herself as a kind of outsider critic to the county’s response to the COVID-19 crisis at times.