UNF poll: 89% of voters don’t trust Jacksonville City Council to draw fair districts

A stunning 89 percent of Jacksonville voters said they don’t trust the City Council to draw districts in a fair way, and 85 percent said they want a bipartisan panel to handle Jacksonville redistricting instead, according to a new University of North Florida poll.

“Given recent challenges to the City Council’s redistricting procedures, it’s not surprising that folks don’t have a lot of trust in the process,” said Michael Binder, director of the UNF Public Opinion Research Lab. “With trust in the Council’s process so low, it’s no wonder that voters favor an independent panel.”

A previous Tributary/UNF poll asked similar questions about the Florida Legislature’s redistricting process for congressional and legislative maps. That poll found that 70 percent of voters wanted a bipartisan panel to draw new state legislative maps instead of the Florida Legislature, potentially indicating voters trust their local City Council members even less than the already low trust they place in state lawmakers.

In that previous poll, voters said they’d rather City Council districts reflect existing neighborhoods and communities. The Tributary has reported that the city’s proposed map would split 47 neighborhoods.

People can tell City Council what they think about the redistricting plans tonight at Raines High School from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Only 32 percent of voters said they somewhat or strongly approved of the job City Council is doing, while 57 percent said they somewhat or strongly disapproved.

Of the other public figures asked about, only Jaguars General Manager Trent Baalke polled worse (13 percent approved, 54 percent didn’t approve).

The poll also found a dead heat in the special election for City Council At Large Group 3, with 50 percent of likely voters saying they’d vote for Democrat Tracye Polson and 50 percent saying they’d vote for Republican Nick Howland.

UNF conducted the poll by email with 443 voters, including 341 likely voters, and weighted the results by party registration, age, race, education and gender.

The poll results aren’t certain, and UNF estimated a 4.7 percentage point credibility interval. That means there is a 95 percent chance that the percentage of likely voters supporting Howland is between 45 percent and 54.4 percent, and the percentage of likely voters supporting Polson is between 45.6 percent and 55 percent.

Polson won 36.7 percent of the vote in an initial December election, and Howland won 35.9 percent. Overall, Democratic candidates combined for 50.4 percent of the vote to Republicans’ 49.6 percent. Republican

Because no one got a majority, the election to replace the late City Councilman Tommy Hazouri went to a runoff. Early voting is going on now, and election day is next Tuesday.

Jacksonville will elect a new mayor and a new sheriff in the 2023 elections.

So far, Democrat Lakesha Burton leads the sheriff’s election with 39 percent support, followed by Republican T.K. Waters at 27 percent and Republican Matt Nemeth at 15 percent. Democrats Tony Cummings and Wayne Clark have four and two percent support, respectively.

In the mayor’s race, Democrat Donna Deegan has 41 percent support. Republican JAX Chamber President Daniel Davis, who has yet to announce a campaign, had 20 percent support. Republican City Councilwoman Leanna Cumber had nine percent support, and seven percent of voters said they support fellow Republican City Councilman Al Ferraro.

Combined, voters 36 percent of voters support the Republican candidates, compared to the 41 percent for Deegan, the sole Democratic candidate. Republican voters were more likely than Democrats to say they support “someone else”.