Boston Voters Think All The Candidates Are Great

I love everybody—and so do Boston voters, apparently. The new Suffolk/Herald poll finds that no more than 16 percent view any of the citywide candidates unfavorably. John Connolly’s favorable/unfavorable percentages are a super 62/14; Marty Walsh is close behind at 55/16.

The at-large City Council candidates aren’t far off: Ayanna Pressley 52/10; Michelle Wu 46/6; Michael Flaherty 45/16; Jeff Ross 31/8; Jack Kelly 22/6; Martin Keogh 19/10; and Annissa George 17/7. [Update: I accidentally left off Stephen Murphy 39/16]

What an embarrassment of riches these voters find in their choices to fill City Hall.

And none of that is close to the city’s burbling Menino fanfest, which stands at 81/12 in this poll. Geez, even the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which the same poll had underwater at 31/38 less than a month ago, is now at 38/28.

Anyhoo, the numbers you want to know from the poll show Connolly with a seven-point lead over Walsh, 41 percent to 34 percent. That’s a big drop from the pre-preliminary 15-point gap, from the Suffolk/Herald hypothetical head-to-head question in September. Most of that comes from Walsh’s gains—not too surprising, since the previous poll came before Walsh’s huge ad blitz and the media attention both leading to and following his first-place preliminary finish. Walsh’s fav/unfav shot up—at least according to this rose-colored poll—from 46/23 to 55/16.

I haven’t seen the cross-tabs, so I’m not going to try to read much more into all this yet. For now, I’m assuming that all of this is tainted by the Red Sox ongoing playoff run, and that if the Sox go bad, we’ll see all of this happy-joy attitude fall to earth like a fly ball to Will Myers.