POLL SHOWS CHICAGO MAYOR JOHNSON “UNDERWATER” BY 73.3 POINTS IN “APPROVAL”

POLL SHOWS CHICAGO MAYOR JOHNSON “UNDERWATER” BY 73.3 POINTS IN “APPROVAL” (Chicago, IL) – The good news for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is that he still has more than 2 years in his term. The bad news is that Johnson still has 2 more years to serve as mayor – and I use the phrase “serve” advisedly.

The horrendous news for Chicagoans is that the mayor’s decision-making demonstrated since he was elected will surely lead to 2 more years of misgovernance, political wins and political loses.

But do not lose hope. There is an exit ramp on the horizon. Brandon Johnson is NOT going to be re-elected in 2027. He is NOT going to finish among the top two in the Feb. 23 multi-candidate election and will therefore NOT make it to the April 6 runoff. In fact, Johnson will finish fifth or lower and, I predict, the runoff will be between Alexi Giannoulias and Kam Buckner.

M3 Strategies, a firm founded by politician-turned-pollster Matt Podgorski, was commissioned to do a poll by the Urban Center, a conservative pro-school choice group, and was on the phone Feb. 20-21 and got a sample of 700 Likely Voters (LVs). Their key question, according to Podgorski, was “Do you approve of Mayor Johnson’s job performance?” Yes or No? The result was an astonishing 6.6/79.9. That’s right – just 6.6 percent approved. 6.6 percent.

This poll is not an outlier. M3 did 2 polls for the conservative Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) in 2024, one early and one late in the year and found Johnson’s “approval” at 20 and 14 percent, respectively. So forget that the mayor has “no place to go but up.” He’s down 7.1 points in a year. He’s on a trajectory to be at the bottom of a political crater.

Pollsters are fond of the phrase “underwater.” That’s the point differential between disapprove/approve. Joe Biden’s numbers in 2024 averaged 55/39, so he was underwater by 15-plus points. That didn’t affect Democrats’ ability to raise money ($1.5 billion) but it did impede the ability of Harris-Walz to win. If the M3 polls are to be believed, then Johnson is now UNDERWATER by 73.3 points.

Johnson is DOA. Not even his puppet-master CTU is going to waste its money on him. They are still waiting for him to pay them back for getting him elected.

And even on the off-chance that teacher’s union (CTU) president Stacy Davis Gates would consider a run for mayor, her inept handling of the CPS contract negotiations, in which CTU is pushing for more dues-paying support personnel, raises, housing and etc. has been unimpressive. They’ve been “negotiating” for 2 years. The CTU has its own CTU-funded stooge as mayor and still can’t get what they demand. Johnson is not the type to bend to the obvious, to recognize reality. So he will run as the 2027 Woke/Left champion.

To put M3’s poll in context – and there have been no other polls to rebut M3’s findings – check the attached 2023 and 2019 vote CHART. Johnson won the April 2023 runoff 319,481-283,033, a margin of 36,448 and spread of 52.2-47.8 percent in a 564,624 turnout. The city has roughly 1.55 million registered voters (RVs), so 2023 turnout was around 35 percent. The turnout in the multi-candidate (9) Feb. election was 566,973 and the top finishers were Paul Vallas with 32.9 percent and Johnson with 21.6; their vote was 185,743-122,093, with Lori Lightfoot third at 94,890, or 16.8 percent.

Note that Johnson’s vote was up by 197,388 from February, and Vallas’s up by 107,290, but the turnout was down by 2,349. In Feb. there were 7 Black candidates running  (Johnson, Lightfoot, Wilson, Green, Buckner, King and Sawyer) and they got a combined 53.4 percent, one Latino (Garcia) who got 13.7 percent, and one White (Vallas) who got 32.9 percent. That roughly approximates the breakout of the city electorate in a non-partisan election: It flows along racial lines which among actual voters is 50/35/15 White/Black/Latino, with overlaps.

Lightfoot got some White LGBTQ support; Johnson received some White Woke/Left support, especially among Gen Y and Z and north Lakefront voters.

The election was initially a referendum on Lightfoot but it was obvious by early 2022 (post-COVID) that she was a loser-in-waiting. Polling had her “approval” shriveling. The voters’ question was: Who else to pick? By Jan. 2023 Lightfoot was at 22 percent. A month later she got 16.8 percent.

But Johnson won because his CTU strategists racialized the Vallas-Johnson contest.  Johnson got 80-90 percent in Black wards, 70-80 in the West Side Puerto Rican wards and over 50 in the north Lakefront wards, while getting buried on the Northwest Side and in Mexican-majority wards. Vallas lost because he didn’t exceed 65 percent of the White vote. 2027 will not be another 2023.

Johnson’s base is not the 319,481 he got in the runoff. And that would be only 20 percent of all RVs. His base is the 185,743 he got in Feb. 2023, which is 12 percent of the RVs. Factor in his 6.6 percent “approval”: According to Podgorski the mayor’s favorable/unfavorable among Blacks in the M3 sample is 14/67, among Latinos 2/58 and among Whites 5/84. Those are not “Panic Time” numbers. They are “Last Rites” numbers.

But Jonson, an ex-CTU “organizer,” has a strategy. “If you ain’t with us, you gotta go,” he proclaimed at a church on Feb. 10. In other words, Johnson blames his predicament not on incompetence but rather on not “cleaning house” and getting rid of holdover Lightfoot and Emanuel and Daley city employees. So it’s “them” and not “us” who are the problem. Wasn’t Johnson the one who adamantly refused to cut the 2024 and 2025 budgets by making layoffs. Johnson’s belief was that if you work for the city then you’re an “us.” Not anymore.

If the already-forgotten Lightfoot got 94,890 votes and 16.8 percent with a 22 percent “approval,” then wrap your brain around a man with 6.6. Johnson would be lucky to get 35,000 votes, if that, out of 550,000 cast. Johnson “has built no coalition” of support, said alderman Nick Sposato (38th). “He only plays to his Woke base, which is nowhere near a majority.”