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A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling found the race for mayor is wide open, with District 19 Councilmember Freddie O’Connell leading the pack of mayoral hopefuls but four others within the margin of error of his lead.
Commissioned by NAIOP Nashville, a commercial real estate development association, the poll surveyed 541 likely voters June 2-3 and showed O’Connell with 10 percent, Jeff Yarbro with 9 percent, Heidi Campbell and Matt Wiltshire with 8 percent and Sharon Hurt with 7 percent. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.2 percent.
The poll also found that almost half of all voters, 45 percent, were undecided. Alice Rolli received 4 percent, Jim Gingrich received 3 percent and no other candidate registered individually. Six percent of voters chose “someone else.”
The poll also measured favorability and unfavorability among voters. Yarbro measured the highest, with 29 percent of voters having a favorable opinion of him, followed by Campbell (26), O’Connell (20), Wiltshire (20), Hurt (17), Gingrich (11) and Rolli (8). Campbell had the highest unfavorable numbers at 16 percent while Wiltshire had the lowest at 8 percent.
“As Nashville prepares to elect its fourth mayor in eight years, NAIOP is pleased to offer this poll as a public service to voters in Metro Nashville,” says NAIOP Nashville’s Executive Director Caroline Mullen in a release.
While several campaigns have been polling in the last few weeks, the PPP poll is the first public poll by a credible pollster in this cycle. An earlier poll by a school choice group found Campbell with 17 percent, but also oversampled Campbell’s state Senate district. Public Policy Polling is a firm typically aligned with Democratic candidates and has an A- rating in Five Thirty Eight’s pollster rankings with an average of 80 percent of races called correctly, though the North Carolina-based company has not published any Nashville-specific polling in recent years.
The full results of the poll can be found here.
