A pair of city councilwomen top the latest poll for Atlanta's mayoral contest, leading a gaggle of rivals who remain within striking distance in the wide-open race.
The 11Alive poll has Mary Norwood at 28 percent, staking her with the same formidable lead that other polls showed. It also showed Keisha Lance Bottoms with 15 percent of the vote, the highest tally she's reached yet in public polling.
The Nov. 7 race seems destined for a December runoff between Norwood and another rival, and Bottoms hopes a late surge propels her to the No. 2 spot over the next five weeks.
City Council President Ceasar Mitchell trailed at 10 percent, and other leading contenders – ex-city official Peter Aman, former state Sen. Vincent Fort, councilman Kwanza Hall and former council president Cathy Woolard – logged 7 percent. They’re all within the poll’s 4 percent margin of error.
And much is still up in the air: Some 14 percent of the respondents remained undecided.
Several of the trailing candidates pushed back on the results.
Aman’s campaign was the most vigorous, sending a press release saying the pollster assumed a higher black and female turnout than demographics and past turnout suggests. His campaign recalculated the poll based on its modeling, and the revised results showed him in a tie for second with Bottoms.
The WXIA poll reinforces several themes that emerged in previous surveys of the 13-person race.
Norwood still holds formidable leads among white voters – 40 percent – and is second among black voters. She also dominates across the political spectrum, tallying the most support among both strong Republicans (61%) and strong Democrats (22%). She leads among the city’s richest voters by 20 points.
Bottoms, meanwhile, earned the most African-American support and trailed only Norwood among women, Democrats and independents. Aman and Woolard got double-digit white support, while Mitchell and Hall tallied double-digit black support.
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