Incumbent Levar Stoney holds a wide lead in Richmond’s mayoral race, a new Richmond Times-Dispatch poll shows, but 30% of voters are undecided — a wildcard that could potentially elevate his two closest competitors as Election Day nears.
In his bid for another four-year term, Stoney leads his nearest opponents in the field of five candidates by 20 points citywide, according to a poll conducted by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University and commissioned by The Times-Dispatch. That translates to decisive leads in four of the nine city voter districts. Four other districts are shaping up as battlegrounds between Stoney and Kimberly Gray or Alexsis Rodgers, poll results show.
“In the context of a five-way race, Stoney seems to be in a commanding position,” said Quentin Kidd, dean of the College of Social Sciences at CNU.
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Of 601 likely city voters surveyed between Sept. 22 and Oct. 5, 36% said they support Stoney; 16%, Gray; 15%, Rodgers; 3%, Justin Griffin; and 1%, Tracey Mclean.
Critically, 30% of the poll’s respondents remain unsure of what candidate to support. Who those voters back could be key to whether Stoney wins the contest outright on Election Day, by carrying five of the nine voter districts, or heads to a run-off of the top two vote getters with either Gray or Rodgers.
“If they are aware voters and they are withholding their support for the incumbent, then where do those 30% go?” Kidd said. “If they went to a Gray or a Rodgers, or they split between the two, we could see a completely different result on Election Day.”
The poll has a 4.3% citywide margin of error. Smaller sample sizes at the district-level resulted in margins of error ranging between 11.4% and 15.1%, depending on the district, leaving the leader in certain districts unclear.
However, the district-level data offers an indication of where across the city Stoney has solidified, or grown, support since winning election in 2016, as well as where Gray and Rodgers have established, or gained, a foothold.
Stoney holds sizeable advantages in four of the nine voter districts: the 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th.
Gray, who represents the 2nd District on the council, leads her home district.
Four other districts are toss-ups, the poll found, with no candidate holding a lead greater than the district-level margin of error.
Stoney and Rodgers, the Virginia director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, are jockeying for the lead in the 3rd and 8th districts. Stoney and Gray are in the running in the 4th District.
Each has a fighting chance in the West End 1st District, where Stoney, Gray and Rodgers are all polling within the margin of error and more than a third of voters are undecided.
The poll shows Stoney with about the same level of support citywide he garnered as a first-time candidate, but with a shifting coalition. He has made gains in historically African American strongholds, like the 8th and 9th districts, which he lost in 2016. Half of Black respondents to the survey said they support Stoney.
Gray’s support is concentrated largely in the whiter, more affluent areas of the city. Rodgers, meanwhile, is the top choice among voters under the age of 34, a key bloc that helped propel Stoney to victory back in 2016.
Stoney maintains an advantage over the field despite a middling approval rating and mixed feelings about the direction the city is headed, the poll found. Fewer than half of voters said they approve of his job performance as mayor during his first term, while 43% said they disapprove of it.
Challengers have taken aim at his record on public schools and providing basic services to city residents. About 60% of voters said they approve of the city’s delivery of basic services under Stoney. Forty-three percent said they approve of the job he’s done on education.
As in years past, education was the top issue for voters polled, with 43% saying it’s the “most important” priority the city’s next mayor must address, followed by police reform, with 22%, and the COVID-19 pandemic, with 19%.
In addition, the poll offers insight on how the events of the past six months are shaping the race.
Voters are divided on Stoney’s handling of protests that swept the city this summer, with 55% saying they disapprove. On the COVID-19 pandemic, voters approve of his administration’s response by a margin of 3-to-1.
Likewise, voters resoundingly said they support the removal of Confederate statues from the public sphere. Only 22% said they did not.
That could bode well for Stoney, who ordered the statues’ removal during the protests, and poorly for Gray, who publicly opposed taking monuments down until the mayor announced plans to do so. Rodgers supported removing the statues prior to announcing her candidacy during the protests.
In another potential wedge issue, three of five voters said they did not support the use of tax dollars to replace the Richmond Coliseum.
Stoney spent two years pushing a $1.5 billion plan to redevelop downtown around a new arena. Gray led a coalition of council members who rejected it. Rodgers has said Stoney wasted time on the deal, at the expense of other pressing issues, like education.
Of the poll’s respondents, women constituted 55% and men 45%; 49% were Black, 44% were white and 7% identified as another race. About a quarter of respondents were under the age of 34; 27% were between the ages of 35 and 54; and half were 55 or older.