“All of the ingredients are here to set up a big win for Wu,” said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University Political Research Center, though he cautioned that the poll captured only a snapshot in time.
Many of the voters who identified concerns with the city still indicated they intend to vote for the incumbent Wu, he said.
“Issues that should hurt her more aren’t hurting her,” Paleologos said.
Half of respondents said the city’s bike lanes — which Wu has largely championed — make it slower and less convenient to get around, and a quarter of those surveyed described Boston Public Schools as “poor.” Both are issues Kraft has attacked her on, but so far, even these vulnerable points have not done much to dent Wu’s overall popularity.
Those issues “aren’t a bomb, they’re a bruise,” Paleologos said. “It’s not enough to kick her out of City Hall.”
As part of a new transportation plan released Friday, Kraft pledged to temporarily pause new bike lane construction, audit existing bike lanes, study how bike lanes are affecting small businesses, and target dangerous “hotspots” to boost safety for all road users.
Wu’s favorability ratings also outstripped Kraft’s. Sixty-six percent of voters had a favorable view of Wu, compared with 36 percent who had a favorable view of Kraft; just 28 percent had an unfavorable view of Wu, compared with 42 percent who had an unfavorable view of Kraft.
Those figures put Wu just ahead of the favorability rating for former mayor Martin J. Walsh in June 2017. Sixty-one percent of voters viewed Walsh favorably at that point in the run-up to his first reelection bid. Walsh went on to win his second term with 65 percent of the vote.
One Wu supporter is Rachel Wyon, 74, who said she shares Wu’s commitment to climate issues and has appreciated the mayor’s firm response to the Trump administration. Wyon, a retired teacher who lives in Jamaica Plain, praised Wu’s appearance in March before a GOP-led congressional committee, and added that the mayor articulated a strong defense of Boston’s immigrant community, of which she is a member.
“She went down to Washington and testified and did a phenomenal job. I was very proud to say that I lived in Boston,” Wyon said in a recent interview, minutes before she headed out to a protest against the Trump administration.
More than one in 10 voters — 13 percent — said they are most concerned in the race with the local response to the Trump administration, one of several issues that has taken on fresh urgency for voters here. Among voters who named responding to Trump as their top issue, the vast majority — 86 percent — said they planned to vote for Wu.
Meanwhile, other issues seem to have faded in prominence. Four years ago, in June 2021, 11 percent of voters said crime was the most important issue affecting their vote; this year, just 6 percent said the same. Violent crimes such as homicide have dramatically declined since Wu first took office in November 2021, city data show, following a national trend.
Other issues, meanwhile, have grown more pressing. More than one in four likely voters named housing as the top issue in the election. That’s an increase from a Suffolk University poll four years ago, which found that one in five said the same.
For many Boston voters, rents continue to climb and homeownership feels increasingly out of reach. Last month, for the first time, the median price for a single-family house in Boston topped $1 million, according to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors. Housing policy has been a major point of contention in the mayor’s race so far, as Kraft blames Wu’s affordable housing requirements for limiting growth in the city, even as broad economic factors have many cities struggling to build.
The two leading candidates are also split over the idea of a real estate transfer tax, which would impose a small fee on high-dollar real estate sales to support housing efforts. Wu supports it, Kraft opposes it.
The two are also divided on the issue of rent control, which Wu has championed as a signature issue for years. Kraft has proposed an alternate, opt-in form of the policy that would offer landlords tax breaks if they agree to cap annual rent increases. Wu has rejected that plan as “fake rent control.”
In the new poll, 65 percent of likely voters said Boston should be able to cap rent increases. To do so, however, the city would need sign-off from the state Legislature, which has resisted the policy so far.
Nearly half of voters — 45 percent — said their life in Boston is either somewhat or very unaffordable.
Doug Colton, 60, who lives in South Boston and said he has not decided who he will support for mayor, expressed concerns about the city’s housing crisis. As experts and city officials express the need for more housing to be built, city data show 2023 and 2024 were the slowest years for housing construction since 2011.
Wu is “on the right path, but I think she’s also stunting growth a little bit with her restrictions,” said Colton, who works in finance. He said he knows many in the building industry who have struggled to get projects completed in Boston. Colton owns his home, but cited the rising costs of taxes and utilities as a strain.
Colton has reservations about Wu, but isn’t sure Kraft is the right alternative, he said. Kraft, who spent three decades at the Boys and Girls Club of Boston, is also the son of billionaire Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a pedigree that has some voters skeptical.
“I have a hesitancy against millionaires buying their way into positions where it affects people’s lives,” Colton said. “What’s driving him to do this?”
Other voters say they are all in on Kraft. Serina Tate, 54, met Kraft earlier this year before he launched his bid for mayor.
“I love him and his humility,” said Tate, who lives in Dorchester. “He does not have to do this. He could sit on the couch for the rest of his life and be OK.” And yet he is working hard for a public service job, and has headquartered his campaign in Roxbury’s Nubian Square, an indication of his dedication to Boston’s communities of color, she said.
Much of what’s happened in the city under Wu has plagued Tate, she said, from the expansion of the bike lanes that seem to only worsen gridlock traffic, to the housing costs that continue to climb.
Kraft, Tate said, “has the ability to bring people together.”
The Suffolk University/Globe poll was conducted from July 13 to 16 with live callers reaching voters on their mobile and landline phones. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her @emmaplatoff.
