New poll shows crime as the most important issue on voter’s minds this year with both Vinatieri and Martinez leading their respective races.
Welcome to this year’s Whittier 360 Whittier City Council Elections Poll for 2022.
The first questions we ask are filtering questions to ensure we are only getting voters who are registered to vote in the city of Whittier.
Once participants made it past those qualification questions it was on to the big league questions.
First up was the question, “Which of the following local issues are you most concerned about?
The data shows that respondents expressed the greatest concern about crime than they did the other issues on the list. Two thirds of respondents said that crime was the issue that was of most concern to them this election year.
The next set of questions dealt with how the City Council and the local community handled the COVID 19 pandemic.
Out of a maximum rating of 10 with 10 being the best, how do you rate the Whittier City Council’s handling of the COVID 19 pandemic?
A majority (60% giving scores of 7 or greater) approved of the way in which the current Whittier City Council handled the pandemic. So far so good for the current incumbents. But not so on the next question in the poll. Almost 47% gave the council a rating of 8 or greater on the pandemic. Thirteen percent gave them a rating of 3 or less.
The next question asked participants to rate the city council’s handling of the crime issue. This is the only issue in which participants gave the Whittier City Council low marks. About 60% provided low ratings for the city council’s handling of crime. Twenty percent gave a failing rating. while another 27% gave the council a score of 4. in the meantime, another 20% gave the council a score of 8.
Going back to the COVID pandemic, participants were asked to rate how well local healthcare professionals handled the COVID 19 pandemic. Two thirds of poll participants or more than 1,000 out of 1,512 poll participants gave local healthcare professionals positive ratings on the handling of COVID 19 pandemic. That is not all. A majority, 53% gave a rating of 8 or greater to local healthcare professionals on the pandemic.
Next we asked people to rate their neighbors on how those neighbors handled the COVID 19 pandemic. This is essentially equivalent to asking them to rate how the whole community. Eighty seven percent of respondents gave their neighbors a rating of at least 6 or higher. Forty percent gave ratings of 9 or 10. The same as for local healthcare professionals.
But participants were more evenly divided when asked to rate how employers were handling the pandemic. Fifty percent gave their employers negative ratings while the other fifty percent gave their own employers good ratings.
With regard to local school’s we asked, “Out of a maximum rating of 10, how do you rate local school’s handing of the COVID 19 pandemic? There was strong approval by a majority of respondents. At least 60% of respondents gave local schools a rating of 8 or higher on pandemic policies. Nearly 40% gave a rating of 9 and 10.
Participants were almost evenly divided on rating the Whittier City Council’s handling of the city budget. A slim majority of 53% gave the city council a rating of 6 or higher, with most rating the council at 7 or higher.
The next question asked participants “With 10 being the highest, how do you rate the Whittier city council’s handling of the city budget?” This question resulted a slim majority of respondents providing a rating of 6 or greater to the city council for its handling of the city budget. About 47% gave the council a rating of 7 or higher on this issue. Forty percent gave the council a rating of 5 or less with most of those rating the council a 4 or 5.
Asked to rate the city’s relationship with the local business community, an overwhelming majority of more than two thirds gave the council a rating of 7 or greater on its relationship with the local business community. This is another positive sign incumbents and for conservative candidates in this years elections.
When asked to rate the city council’s performance over the last 12 months, an overwhelming majority (more than 73%) of participants gave the council a positive review of 6 or greater. Sixty percent rated the council higher than 7.
The last rating question asked participants to rate how well the Whittier Police Department has been doing its job for the past 12 months. Here we saw overwhelming local support for the PD. At least 87% of respondents rated Whittier PD and its officers an 8 or higher with 10 being the highest rating.
We also asked about a couple of major moves the council has made during that time period. In the first of these we asked, “Do you support Whittier having its own public health department seperate from Los Angeles County’s?” A narrow majority of 53% said they supported the idea of Whittier having its own health department. Forty seven percent were opposed.
In the next question we asked whether participants supported the recall of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. More than 80% of participants said they wanted Gascon to be recalled. Less than twenty support expressed strong support for Gascon.
In the next question we asked whether participants supported the council proposal for Whittier to have its own district attorney to handle all cases that are exclusive to Whittier. A strong majority (73%) supported this option. Twenty seven percent were opposed.
As an added guard against the skewing of the poll we included two toss up questions that had nothing to do with the local election. These had interesting results.
On the question of “do you support the US government’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine” 60% of respondents said they did but a very sizable 40% said they were opposed to how the US government was handling the matter.
On the related question of whether they supported the US military enforcing a no fly zone over Ukraine, however, the numbers were reversed. Sixty percent of respondents opposed the use of US military personnel in enforcing a no fly zone over Ukraine.
Asked about the candidates, conservatives were in the lead. When asked who they intended to vote for in the mayor’s race, 60% said they were voting to keep Joe Vinatieri in office. The strongest challenger was Rolando Cano with more than 13% of the vote. But almost 27% of respondents marked the none of the above option, indicating they wanted to see a new face in the mayor’s race. One participant, who agreed to be identified, Gill Martinez, said he was tired of seeing the same faces running for the office year after year. This is not a surprise because the more a person runs for the same office over and over again, the less and less support that candidate gets in each future election for that office. The numbers on this question are a reflection of that.
In the council district 2 race, Octavio Martinez led with a slim plurality of 44% of the vote while 22% of respondents said they intended to vote for Mary Sullens. Interestingly a sizeable 23% of district 2 voters said they wanted a different candidate on the ballot this year. Eleven percent of voters said they intended to vote for Michael Kazarian.
The interesting thing here are those respondents who expressed dissatisfaction with the available choices. Most of these are independents and decline to state voters. That means they are essentially toss up votes for the mayoral and district two races and in the district two race they will ultimately decide whether Sullens or Martinez gets the seat. For this group, the top issue was crime with historic preservation coming in at a significant 16%. They support Whittier having its own health department at a rate of 2/3s or 67%. By an identical margin they support recalling George Gascon. And 83% of this group supported Whittier having its own district attorney. They are evenly split on the issue of the US government’s response to the invasion of Ukraine and a majority of these voters, 67%, oppose any US military participation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
A bare majority of these voters, 53% gave the city council good ratings on COVID 19 pandemic question. A majority, 52% gave low ratings to the council on the issue of crime. A slim majority of these voters gave positive ratings to how the council has handled the city budget.
The election on March 12th and mail in ballots have already been sent out. Members of the City Council and candidates in this year’s election had not responded to requests for comment by the time of this publication but if they do we will relay that in a future article.
Out of a maximum rating of 10 with 10 being the best, how do you rate the Whittier City Council’s handling of the COVID 19 pandemic?
Out of a maximum rating of 10 with 10 being the best, how do you rate the Whittier City Council’s handling of crime?
Out a maximum rating of 10 with 10 being the best rating, how do you rate local healthcare professionals handling of the COVID 19 pandemic?
Out a maximum rating of 10 with 10 being the best rating, how do you rate your neighbors’ handling of the COVID 19 pandemic?
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