It's a pretty interesting:
www.mprnews.org/story/2021/09/19/poll-support-for-frey-council-splitMain takeaways:
-Jacob Frey sits at 35-36 favorable/unfavorable ratings, with the City Council at 28-44. (No head to head mayoral numbers, possibly because they don't want to deal with polling IRV.)
That doesn't sound too hot for Frey on paper, but my anecdotal observations is that almost all of the people who are neither favorable or unfavorable but familiar with him are voting for him, due to his weak and easy to criticize opponents. I'm hearing all sorts of "Ugh I don't want to vote for Frey but his opponents are just sooooooooooo ridiculous" type things. Also he won both the Reddit and NextDoor polls easily with lots of people criticizing him but offering reluctant support in the comments. Standard grain of salt, etc. remarks about such polls applies obviously.
The three ballot questions were polled, although each more with a vague "do you support what this measure claims to do?" poll question instead of outright asking for the vote on it. Regardless:
-Question 1 would change the city government to a "strong mayor" system, and this is supported 47-28.
-Question 3 is a rent control measure, albeit a pretty milquetoast one, it doesn't implement any rent control policies itself, and merely empowers the City Council to pass "rent stabilization" measures. There is a rent control measure also up for vote in St. Paul but it actually implements policies and would be one of the strongest in the US if passed. Please note that both are on very dubious legal ground to Minnesota state law and would almost certainly be immediately challenged if passed. However when asked if the City Council should be allowed to "regulate rent on private property", 46% supported it to 39% opposed.
Meanwhile the most watched amendment got its own article:
www.mprnews.org/story/2021/09/18/poll-shows-support-for-public-safety-amendment-but-not-for-cutting-police-force-Question 2 would replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new "Department of Public Safety" umbrella department that "may, if necessary" employ police which it now refers to as "peace officers" and abolish the City Charter's minimum staffing requirements. This description is supported 49-41. However actually shrinking the police department is opposed 55-29, with some interesting crosstabs:
It also shows the Minneapolis PD at 20 points net disapproval at 53-33, however Chief Arradondo is popular at 55 approve-22 disapprove.
The replace the police department question also has some interesting crosstabs:
Based on these, you'd expect all three ballot measures to be in a prime position to pass. However I'd be hesitant in regards to the latter two, since the questions are asking more about the vague concept and not the actual wording of the amendments (Question 2 is notoriously confusing to many and turning them off to it) and also turnout, the blacks will definitely turn out with their churches and Frey's machine (they are far more supportive of Frey in the poll than other demographics), as will the affluent people in places like Lynden Hills and Frey's old City Council Ward*, while the sort of pot-smoking Millennial who raves about hating Republicans on social media types who I bet are supportive of both aren't as likely. So we'll see.
We also have an interesting City Council race in my ward which is open after Lisa Bender opted not to run again, basically three "progressives" vs. three "establishment" candidates, I'm probably going to be one of the few "ticket splitters" and intend to rank one of the progressives as my first choice but two of the "establishment" candidates for my next two slots. Basically the reason is one of the progressives is pretty awesome, a really intelligent young woman with some pretty well thought out plans, while the other two are ridiculous, one is basically a walking stereotype of formerly Tumblr/now Twitter woke buzzword throwing types and the other is the most ridiculous "DSA member who isn't endorsed by the DSA" candidate since Joshua Collins and that guy in San Antonio who came close to calling for the death of Barack Obama and got like 4%.
*It's not uniformly affluent, but it does include the single most affluent and expensive part of the city.
