Janeese Lewis George leads Kenyan R. McDuffie by double-digits in the Democratic primary for D.C. mayor, boosted by voters who find her more honest and think she will do a better job handling issues of affordability and public schools, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll. But a quarter of voters remain undecided about the race as the primary enters its final days.
Lewis George, a democratic socialist who represents Ward 4 on the D.C. Council, leads McDuffie, a former at-large council member, by 11 percentage points among likely voters in the June 16 election.
Still, despite months of heated campaigning and a barrage of ads by the candidates and their supporters, 25 percent of the electorate hasn’t made up their minds about who should replace D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in an election that promises dramatic change in the city’s governance, with several council seats and a congressional race also up for grabs.
More than half of voters say they believe the District is on the wrong track, and nearly half of Democrats want a mayor who offers a “new direction.”
Lewis George “clearly is the candidate who has the favor of the progressive left, who see her as the agent of change in the city,” said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, which co-sponsored the poll. Rozell noted that primary elections tend to bring out more voters at the farthest ends of the political spectrum, rather than centrists.
Lewis George’s edge is bolstered by high ratings on affordability and education, where voters say they trust her in handling the issues more than McDuffie. The former council member is seeing more success among voters than Lewis George on the issue of crime, according to the poll.
Voters have begun to cast their ballots in the primary by mail or through placing ballots in drop boxes, and in-person early voting starts on Monday.
Rozell said the high number of undecided voters this late in the campaign “suggests there’s a lot of people who haven’t paid really close attention to the differences between these candidates.”
“Theoretically, at least, that gives McDuffie a chance to make the case, to bring in the persuadable voters,” he said. Undecided voters are concentrated among groups that lean toward McDuffie, including moderates, Black voters and those ages 65 and older.
This month’s election is the first in which D.C. voters will be able to rank up to five candidates, in order of preference, on the ballot. Winners must receive at least 50 percent of the vote. The Post-Schar School poll asked respondents whom they would rank for mayor with their first, second and third choices.
Among likely Democratic voters, 36 percent say Lewis George is their first choice in the race, while 25 percent say McDuffie is, according to the poll. The other candidates in the mayoral race — Vincent B. Orange, Gary Goodweather, Rini Sampath, Ernest Johnson and Hope Solomon — are ranked as the top choice by less than 5 percent of voters each, the poll finds.
Lewis George leads by a narrower seven points among registered Democrats overall, but the poll finds that her supporters are more certain to vote and also have a stronger track record turning out in previous elections.
Lewis George’s lead is particularly large among younger voters and people who have lived in the city less than 20 years. Her lead is widest in Ward 1, where she is ahead of McDuffie by 37 points among likely voters, and in Ward 6, where she leads McDuffie by 16 points. But her advantage shrinks east of the Anacostia River, where she and McDuffie are nearly tied and more than 4 in 10 are undecided.
Lewis George leads by 25 points among White voters, while McDuffie leads by five points among Black voters, a margin that isn’t statistically significant.
Lewis George has galvanized the left, with voters who identify as “very liberal” favoring her by a 45-point margin. McDuffie holds a much smaller 11-point edge with moderate and conservative voters, although about one-third are still undecided.
Lewis George also maintained an overall double-digit lead when respondents’ second and third choices were factored in, garnering 40 percent support to 29 percent for McDuffie, the poll found.
More than half of voters said D.C. is unaffordable to them, and the poll showed that Democrats are gravitating toward Lewis George on issues related to the cost of living. Forty-four percent of registered Democrats say they trust her to do a better job handling housing affordability issues, compared with 29 percent for McDuffie, the poll finds. Lewis George also has an edge on the question of who would do a better job handling public schools.
Jatarious Frazier, a 35-year-old who lives in the Trinidad neighborhood, said he is leaning toward Lewis George because he finds her campaign bold and innovative, particularly on the issue of housing.
“I do think [McDuffie] would be good for businesses, and I do like a lot of his more pragmatic approaches,” said Frazier, a government employee. “But I am concerned about incrementalism.”
McDuffie does have an advantage on one issue, the poll finds: crime and public safety, where 40 percent of voters trust his approach, compared with 32 percent for Lewis George.
“Safety was the number one to me,” said Patrick Cox, 35, a Mount Vernon Square resident who decided to vote for McDuffie in part because he thought they aligned on the youth curfew and other public safety issues. “There are shootings blocks from my house frequently, and if I live in a city where it costs a million dollars to buy a house, I don’t think that’s something I should be dealing with. So I do think enforcing crime is also critical.”
Asked to describe the biggest problem facing the District, 20 percent of registered voters named crime or violence as the problem they want the mayor to work hardest to solve — even as the vast majority of voters feel safe in their neighborhoods. Other topics ranking high among voters’ concerns include the economy, President Donald Trump and housing costs.
On youth curfews, Lewis George stands in stark contrast to the majority of voters, the poll finds. Among registered voters, 71 percent support banning teens from gathering in certain parts of the city at night, while 20 percent oppose them. McDuffie has seized on the issue in recent weeks, convening news conferences to excoriate Lewis George for her unwillingness to support curfew policies before the council.
But Lewis George’s vulnerability on public safety issues does not outweigh her advantages in a race in which voters appear tired of the status quo, according to the poll.
While most voters, 57 percent, think Bowser has accomplished a great deal or a good amount during her tenure, the mayor’s disapproval rating (49 percent) rose by eight points over the past year and comes close to her worst marks in any year in which The Post has surveyed voters on that question.
That leaves McDuffie, who has gained support from business leaders, some members of Bowser’s Cabinet and others in the city’s political establishment, potentially fighting an uphill battle. In addition, nearly half of registered Democrats have a favorable view of socialism, while just 28 percent have an unfavorable view of it, according to the poll — meaning that Lewis George’s ties to leftist politics may not hurt her in the race, Rozell said.
“It seems socialism is cool these days with many of the Democratic Party-based voters,” said Rozell. “So things that perhaps a generation ago would have been entirely disqualifying … now are right in the mainstream of the activist core of the Democratic Party.”
The biggest gap in residents’ perceptions of the candidates comes on the issues of honesty; 43 percent of registered Democrats say they find Lewis George more honest and trustworthy, compared with 23 percent for McDuffie, the poll finds.
The findings are a sign that attack ads from Lewis George and her allies — who have sought to portray McDuffie as cozy with utility executives amid steep rate hikes and noted his support of a sports gambling contract that listed his cousin on related documents — may be having an effect.
McDuffie has denied that his oversight of utilities while chair of the business committee was lackluster and accused the Lewis George campaign of obscuring the role of other factors that raise utility prices, including data centers. McDuffie has also maintained that he did not know his cousin was listed as a subcontractor in the sports gambling deal, and the subcontracting company said at the time that McDuffie’s cousin was listed in error.
For some voters, the attack ads are disqualifying in the other direction.
“Frankly, I thought the ads being run against [McDuffie] were insanely unfair,” said Steven Altman, a 69-year-old retired lawyer and Tenleytown resident. “Criticizing him for having conversations with Pepco? Seriously? And attributing city council votes as if he had the decisive power to direct contracts and what have you? He just strikes me as a sensible guy.”
Kevin Fitzgerald, 67, said his chief concern about the primary race is the mudslinging he’s seen between opponents, especially from Lewis George and McDuffie. The campaign “is down and dirty,” he said, “so it doesn’t reflect well on either of them.”
A retiree, Fitzgerald plans to volunteer on Election Day, helping voters with logistics questions. But he was still unsure of how he would cast his own ballot. For the first time, he said he might leave the bubbles next to “mayor” blank.
“I’m so unimpressed with every one of the candidates that I know about,” he said.
Other undecided voters are checked out of local politics entirely.
“I’ve been just so focused on having a job, maintaining a stable income,” said John Rehm, 32, a federal contractor who has spent months unemployed. “And then with everything else going on in the news, it’s almost taken all my mental, political effort to try to keep up with what’s going on federally that the D.C. side has kind of been pushed aside.”
This poll was conducted by The Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government from May 27-June 1 among a random sample of 1,002 registered voters in the District. Live-caller interviews reached respondents on cellphones (58 percent) and landlines (11 percent); 30 percent of respondents were reached via text message and invited to take the survey online.
The overall margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points among D.C. registered voters overall, and 3.7 points among the sample of 836 registered Democrats and likely primary voters. All registered voters were assigned a probability of voting to produce likely voter results.
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