The leader in the clubhouse in the Hamilton County's mayor race is ... undecided.
That's what one is left to conclude after almost 40% of the 816 respondents in a poll done by Spry Strategies for conservative local think tank Hamilton Flourishing didn't answer the question as to their preference in the May Republican primary. And, of those who did answer, more than 46% were undecided.
That suggests the race, currently among former home improvement company owner Matt Hullander, Hamilton County Commission Chairwoman Sabrena Smedley and nonprofit executive Weston Wamp, is wide open.
As of noon Monday, no Democrat had entered the race, but candidates have until noon on Feb. 17 to do so.
For the record, of the 322 who answered the question, 84 (26.1%) favored Hullander, 61 (19%) chose Wamp and 28 (8.6%) picked Smedley. Undecided, with 149 votes, was the clear leader. The poll's 816 respondents are about .35% of the county's approximately 236,000 registered voters (as of the 2020 November election).
The weighted poll, conducted Jan. 6-8, has margin of error of plus or minus 3.4%.
When asked to identify their political ideology, 54.3% of respondents indicated they were either somewhat conservative or very conservative, but when asked whether they considered themselves to be Republican, Democrat, independent or another party, only a plurality of 39% said they were Republicans.
Only 14.8% of respondents characterized their ideology as somewhat liberal or very liberal, in step with the party's increasingly left-wing national base, but 29.8% still said they considered themselves to be Democrats.
In the poll, 30.9% of respondents labelled themselves as ideologically moderate, and 26.5% said they considered themselves to be politically independent.
The Spry poll respondents may have been uncertain about their mayoral choice, but they were certain what they wanted him or her to prioritize.
Twenty-seven percent of those who answered the survey said they wanted their next mayor to tackle crime and public safety, an almost 2-to-1 choice over the next most important issue, economic development and job growth, which was indicated by 15.3% of respondents.
Bunched close behind as the third through fifth choices were homelessness, mental illness and addition (13.2%), K-12 education (13%) and affordable housing (12.2%).
Poll respondents said they were generally happy with the job Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger and the Hamilton County Commission are doing, with 69.4% and 57.7% either somewhat or strongly approving them, respectively.
It was a slightly different story with the Hamilton County Board of Education, which has had to deal with omicron-forced returns to online learning by some schools, questions about the content of books and a superintendent search, just to name a few issues.
A plurality of 49.8% of respondents said they somewhat or strongly approved of the job the board was doing, while 40.3% opined they either somewhat or strongly disapproved.
The education respondents were sure about one thing, though - that elected officials needed to put more effort and resources into improving low literacy rates in urban schools. A resounding 79.1% either somewhat or strongly agreed.
They also got behind a raise for every teacher, with 72.1% somewhat or strongly agreeing, and felt - by 46% to 44.1% - that schools did not have have adequate funding.
Meanwhile, 56.5% felt that the local K-12 curriculum should not teach about "white privilege" and gender fluidity. About equity, a confusing and misused term to many, they were uncertain. A plurality of 26.8% said they were unsure or had no opinion about whether the issue of equity was being handled well by public school administration and teachers.
In the one national question the survey asked, 53.1% of respondents disapproved of the job President Joe Biden is doing, with 45.6% of those strongly disapproving. Approving were 44.8%, with 2.2% unsure or having no opinion.
The survey also tested the current impact on respondents' lives of inflation, Social Security, mortgages or rental costs, gang shootings, road conditions, flooding, sewage and drainage, and homelessness.
Of those subjects, 81.3% said potholes, local road conditions and traffic were having a significant or moderate impact on their lives, while a close 81% said inflation was having a similar impact. Further, 67.1% said Social Security was having such an impact, with the impacts of homelessness, flooding, sewage and drainage, and gang shootings coming in at between 50% and 60% of respondents. The impact of mortgages or rental costs was below 50%.
While the results of the Spry poll about the mayoral race were basically negligible, some of the other responses (Biden's popularity, the effects of inflation, the disapproval of teaching about white privilege, the unhappiness with road conditions) either reflect national trends or usual complaints in any county.
We'll be curious to see how things change as the election year heats up.