Election 2007 countdown: Salt Lake mayoral race: Becker leads Buhler by 20 percentage points

Salt Lake City is in line to elect its third non-Utah-born mayor in less than 25 years, with Ralph Becker holding a 20 percentage-point lead going into Tuesday's election, a new poll shows.

In a Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll conducted by Dan Jones & Associates, Becker, a Democrat, gets 53 percent of voters' support, compared to Republican Dave Buhler's 33 percent support, the survey found.

Jones, who has polled in Utah for 30 years, warns that the survey is not a prediction of what the final vote will be but is a fair snapshot of registered voters' feelings as of last week, when the poll of 405 registered Salt Lake City voters was conducted.

Still, it is hard to imagine that Buhler, a current eight-year city councilman from the Sugar House area, could make up such a large lead held by Becker, the minority leader in the Utah House.

Becker was born in Washington, D.C., and if elected, he would join former mayors Palmer DePaulis and Deedee Corradini as recent top city executives not born in Utah. Becker, a lawyer and urban planner, moved to Utah as a young man, in part to enjoy an outdoors lifestyle.

Becker came out of the September primary election with a healthy lead and has not looked back.

"Ralph picked up the Democratic support that was going to (Salt Lake County Councilwoman) Jenny Wilson," says Jones. Wilson, who once led in the polls, finished third in the primary and was eliminated.

Salt Lake City is one place in Utah where Democrats are a majority over Republicans, notes Jones. But one of Buhler's problems is that he doesn't even get all of the GOP vote — just 73 percent of it.

Becker gets 18 percent of the GOP vote, while Buhler gets only 7 percent of the Democratic vote, Jones found.

The real killer for Buhler, however, is that he gets only 28 percent of the independent vote, while Becker gets 55 percent.

For a Republican to win in the city, Jones says, he has to carry nearly all of his own party's vote, pick up most of the independent vote and even score well with Democrats.

Buhler, 50, doesn't do any of those things, the poll shows.

Buhler has tried to cut into Becker's lead, however. Buhler's main theme is that he's a "doer," not a dreamer, as he labels Becker, the professional planner. But perhaps because of those tougher stands, Jones found that Buhler is carrying some negative feelings among voters.

Three-fourths of city voters said they have a favorable impression of Becker. But Buhler only gets a 61 percent favorable rating. Only 16 percent of voters have an unfavorable feeling about Becker, while Buhler's negatives are at 26 percent, Jones found.