When Danny Davis entered the Chicago mayoral contest, his supporters predicted he would forge a coalition of minorities and white liberals capable of defeating Mayor Richard Daley.
But with five weeks to go before the Democratic primary, Davis is still a long way from that goal and has not even galvanized solid black support, a new Tribune poll shows.
What`s more, creating a winning coalition won`t be easy for Davis in the weeks ahead, because Daley enjoys wide popularity and most voters say he has met or exceeded their expectations in the way he is handling his job, according to the poll.
Former Mayor Jane Byrne, meanwhile, is having little effect on the race, and she is almost as unpopular with voters as Edward Vrdolyak was when he received less than 4 percent of the vote against Daley in the 1989 general election.
About to complete a special two-year term, Daley now has the backing of 57 percent of likely primary voters surveyed for the poll. Davis, by contrast, has won the support of 16 percent of likely voters, and 4 percent say they intend to vote for Byrne.
Davis` situation is expected to improve, because more than a fifth of likely voters say they are undecided, and two-thirds of those are black.
Based on historical patterns, undecided voters can be expected to end up supporting one of the challengers-and, in Chicago, the one of their own race. For that reason, Byrne also could improve her position before the primary is held Feb. 26.
Daley`s popularity continues to grow, the poll shows, with 71 percent of the voters saying they have a favorable opinion of him. Just 12 percent say they view him unfavorably. In addition, 80 percent approve of the way he is performing as Chicago`s chief executive.
Daley`s cautious, media-conscious handling of City Hall has been as good or better than most voters expected. Almost a third of those polled said he has been a better mayor than they expected, and an additional 53 percent rated him as about as good as they thought he would be. Ten percent held that Daley has been not as good as expected.
Daley`s refusal to debate his challengers has not chinked his armor. About a third of the voters said he is doing the wrong thing by not debating the issues, and almost as many said he has made the correct decision, while 29 percent said they don`t care whether he appears at debates with Davis and Byrne.
The new Tribune poll of 600 Chicagoans likely to cast ballots in the Democratic primary was conducted Jan. 11-14 by Market Shares Corp., Mt. Prospect, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Daley, as expected, is wildly popular among white voters, the poll shows, but he also has surprisingly strong backing among blacks, nearly a quarter of whom said they would vote for him if the primary were held now.
Before the campaign ends, Daley could lose some of the black support he had in the new poll. Before both elections in 1989, 10 percent of blacks told pollsters they would vote for Daley, but only 7 percent of those who went to the voting booths cast ballots for him.
Nevertheless, Daley`s campaign directors are hopeful that, this time around, he will at least break into double digits with black voters. And the poll suggests this is within his reach, because nearly half of black voters said they have a favorable opinion of Daley, compared with 21 percent who said they view him negatively.
Since a split in the black community helped Daley defeat former Mayor Eugene Sawyer in the 1989 Democratic primary, then defeat Ald. Timothy Evans
(4th) and Vrdolyak in the general election, the mayor has worked hard throughout the remainder of the late Mayor Harold Washington`s second term to improve his standing among blacks.
During his campaigns against Sawyer and Evans in 1989, black voters had an overall negative opinion of Daley, but the mayor`s standing with blacks has improved steadily since then. Within six months of his election, 44 percent of black voters viewed him favorably and 52 percent approved of his job performance.
In the latest survey, two-thirds of blacks said they approve of the way Daley has performed as mayor. More significantly, the mayor`s job-approval rating among blacks remains nearly what it was in a Tribune survey last August, indicating that Davis and Daley`s opponents in the Chicago City Council have yet to find a cutting issue to use against him.
Neither Davis nor Byrne has been able to sustain an attack on Daley, in part because each has just a fraction of the mayor`s $3.5 million campaign war chest.
Davis, a former West Side alderman who became a Cook County commissioner in December, is being backed by a group of black politicians, including Sawyer and Evans, who agreed to support him as a consensus candidate against Daley.
Rallies in the black community during his first week in the race generated some enthusiasm for Davis, but since then there has been an absence of what campaign organizers call ”street heat.”
And, just as in the case of Sawyer and Evans two years ago, white voters who lined up behind Washington in his two successful mayoral campaigns have yet to embrace Davis.
Davis, who mounted a brief mayoral campaign in 1989, has a modest popularity rating for one who has been on the political scene so long. Slightly more than a third of those interviewed in the new poll said they view him favorably, compared with 15 percent who said they view him negatively.
Davis had nearly the same favorability ratings when he lost the Democratic primary for county treasurer in March to incumbent Edward Rosewell. Among blacks, his base constituency, Davis`s popularity is high. Fifty-eight percent said they hold a favorable opinion of him, compared with just 3 percent who said they view him negatively. His standing among black voters is better than Sawyer`s before the 1989 primary, but below that of Evans before the general election.
Nevertheless, just 31 percent of black voters said they are ready to vote for Davis now, which leaves him in a more precarious position than Sawyer and Evans were in at this point in their campaigns two years ago.
Pre-election polls in 1989 found that 58 percent of blacks said they would vote for Sawyer in the primary, and 69 percent said they would back Evans in the general election.
White voters, including those on the crucial lakefront, are ambivalent about Davis. Twenty-six percent of white lakefront voters surveyed said they view him favorably, and 40 percent said they still have no firm opinion of him.
Among those who have made up their minds, just 3 percent of white lakefront voters are lined up behind Davis, compared with 82 percent who are backing Daley.
Voter opinion of Byrne, who served one tumultuous term as mayor from 1979 to 1983, is very negative. Just one in five voters views her favorably, and more than half have an unfavorable opinion of her.
Asked which candidates they could accept as mayor, 80 percent of poll respondents put Daley in that category, and 47 percent named Davis. Among blacks, 63 percent said they find Daley acceptable, suggesting that it won`t be easy for Davis to nail down the overwhelming support he will need among blacks to defeat the incumbent.
As for Byrne, 60 percent of poll respondents said they find her flat-out unacceptable as mayor.
How poll was taken
The findings of this Tribune Poll are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 600 Chicago voters likely to vote in the Feb. 26 Democratic primary.
In a sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that results will differ by no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points from results obtained if all Cook County likely voters had been polled.
Results based on subgroups within the larger sample have a larger potential margin of error.
The Tribune Poll was conducted Jan. 11-14. Poll research was prepared and analyzed by the Tribune and by Market Shares Corp., Mt. Prospect.
