Harris poised to take lead over Hallinan

While Harris' 51 percent to 48 percent lead among those most likely to vote in the Dec. 9 runoff is within the survey's margin of error, she has a solid 52 percent to 44 percent margin among probable voters.

Hallinan finished first in a tight general election Nov. 4, pulling 36 percent of the vote to 34 for Harris and 30 percent for Bill Fazio.

With more than three weeks left before the election, however, Harris is a long way from declaring victory.

"We always like to get good poll results, but we feel this is a close race and likely to stay that way,'' said Jim Stearns, a political consultant for Harris.

Fazio's voters are the key to the runoff election and the poll, conducted by SurveyUSA of New Jersey, shows Harris grabbing the lion's share of those supporters. The poll has 63 percent of Fazio's backers moving to Harris, with 32 percent supporting Hallinan. Harris also has 52 percent of those who didn't vote in November, compared to 41 percent for Hallinan, according to the poll.

While Hallinan and Harris virtually split the white vote in the poll, Harris has 52 percent of the Latino vote, 56 percent of the black vote and 53 percent of the votes of other ethnics, which includes Asian voters.

Typically, black candidates like Harris do better among their own ethnic voters, said Joseph Shipman, director of election polling for SurveyUSA. Harris' father is African American and her mother is of East Asian descent.

"That's not as big a gap as we usually see,'' Shipman said, referring to Harris' edge with black voters. "That's likely because Harris is appealing more to conservative voters and the black community is typically more liberal. ''

Hallinan's support comes from liberals, who back him 57 percent to 42 percent over Harris, and from young voters, aged 18-34, where he holds a slim 51 percent to 45 percent lead.

Harris has a 56 percent to 41 percent lead among conservatives and 59 percent to 38 percent bulge among moderates, the poll shows.

That's good news for Harris.

"It's always an uphill fight when a woman is running for a law enforcement job, especially with conservative voters,'' Stearns said.

But the race really isn't breaking into a liberal versus conservative battle, Shipman said.

"The district attorney's race seems more about competence than ideology, '' he said. "It's more about who these people are than what they believe.''

SurveyUSA, which works mostly for television stations across the nation, uses automated polling. Computers dial voters and ask them questions, which are answered on the telephone keypad.

A spokeswoman for Hallinan suggested that the 2 percent of undecided voters found among those certain to vote in December was unusually low and might be blamed on the computerized polling.

"There were a lot of people who voted for Fazio in the general election and I don't know that they would have decided so quickly,'' said Laurie Beijen.

"That undecided seems really low to me and I'm not sure how people would react to being called by a computer.''

There's still plenty of time until election day, she said.

"It's a close race and we knew it was going to be close,'' she said. "We've been in close races before and prevailed.''

The poll is based on a telephone survey of 1,012 registered voters in San Francisco, including 486 people judged "certain'' to vote on Dec. 9 and 351 likely to vote. The poll was conducted from Tuesday, Nov. 11, to Thursday, Nov. 13, and has a margin of error of 4.6 percent for the district attorney's race.



©2003 San Francisco Chronicle.