Rocky's lead hefty yet iffy, S.L. poll says

Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson holds a healthy double-digit lead among all registered voters going into Tuesday's primary election, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows.

But pollster Dan Jones & Associates found in a survey of 764 registered city voters that among those most likely to cast ballots Tuesday, Anderson and his closest challenger, Frank Pignanelli, are neck-and-neck.

The top two vote-getters Tuesday advance to the final election Nov. 4. So it's key Tuesday to finish in one of the top two spots.

Molonai Hola, the sole Republican in the non-partisan race, finishes third behind Anderson and Pignanelli in all categories of the poll, Jones found.

But city primaries are iffy things, Jones noted. "It all depends on turnout."

Historically, mayoral primaries attract about 22 percent of registered voters, he added. "But I think this one will be larger, around 35 percent turnout," said Jones, who has polled in Utah for 30 years.

If the primary were today, Jones found that 45 percent would definitely or probably vote for Anderson, 28 percent would vote for Pignanelli and 18 percent would cast ballots for Hola.

F. Joseph Irish would get 1 percent. Lawrence Rey Topham, now sitting in the Salt Lake County Jail, would get less than 1 percent. One percent mentioned someone not on the ballot, 5 percent didn't know and 1 percent refused to say.

The telephone survey was conducted Sept. 29-Oct. 2 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percent.

Anderson's 17-point lead over Pignanelli among all registered voters seems safe.

But because so few city residents usually vote in primary elections, Jones asked several questions of those polled in an effort to see how serious they were about actually voting Tuesday. Combining those responses into a "most likely to vote" category, Jones found that among that group Anderson has 38 percent support, Pignanelli 33 percent support and Hola 23 percent support.

So the Anderson/Pignanelli contest narrows considerably among likely voters.

The poll also shows the continuation of a trend seen throughout the campaign year: Democratic non-Mormons strongly favor Anderson, and most GOP members of the LDS Church don't much like the mayor.