With just over a week to go, the Minneapolis mayoral race is getting real.

Mayor Jacob Frey is “cautiously optimistic” about winning a third term, but the coalition opposed to him, anchored by challenger Sen. Omar Fateh, says not so fast.

Both sides have polls to support their case. But a lot of caveats are in order: polling has been limited; the polls were done before PAC attacks began in earnest and voters were likely engaged; the city employs a tricky-to-handicap ranked-choice voting system; and voter turnout in a traditionally low-turnout municipal election could make the difference.

The election will determine whether Frey gets a third 4-year term and whether City Hall will move farther left. Frey’s most prominent opponent, Fateh, is a democratic socialist, while two other serious challengers, DeWayne Davis and Jazz Hampton, are also more progressive than Frey.

Frey’s campaign manager, Sam Schulenberg, said their internal polling, fundraising and field data show Frey ahead of where he was in 2021, and that Fateh is “our only viable challenger.”

An August poll by a Frey-aligned political action committee All of Mpls found Frey had a 13-point lead over Fateh.

The poll, which simulated the city’s ranked-choice voting system, had Frey leading in the first round with 41% of the vote, followed by Fateh at 28%, former pastor DeWayne Davis at 10%, Republican Laverne Turner at 9% and entrepreneur Jazz Hampton at 5%. The poll had a margin of error of 4%.

Democrats Davis, Fateh and Hampton have formed an alliance in which they want voters to rank all three of them in the hope that when one is eliminated, their votes will transfer to the others, propelling one ahead of Frey.

But in the All of Mpls poll, Frey maintained a double-digit lead throughout the simulation, while Fateh struggled to increase his vote share, as Davis and Turner’s votes redistributed relatively evenly between Fateh and Frey in later rounds of voting retabulation.

The phone and text survey of 600 likely voters was conducted Aug. 8-14 by Impact Research, formerly ALG Polling, which correctly predicted Frey’s vote share within one percentage point in the 2021 election.

While it may seem like a sleepy election compared to 2021 — the year after George Floyd’s police killing sparked several ballot measures and a heated debate on policing — so far early voting is on pace to beat that turnout.

The Frey campaign believes a high turnout is good for Frey overall, although early voting has been highest in Ward 6, which is south and east of downtown, including the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, home to a large East African immigrant community that the Fateh campaign has been pushing hard to vote early.

Frey has money on his side: His campaign finance report that will be released Monday will show he’s raised over $900,000 since January, with over $200,000 in cash on hand. The Fateh campaign said it will report $510,00 raised since January, with $115,000 in cash on hand.

Fateh’s campaign manager Akhilesh Menawat said they’ve knocked on 100,000 doors and pushed people to vote early. He said Frey’s campaign has “made-up polling numbers.”

A progressive, anti-Frey PAC called Minneapolis for the Many also did a poll in late August. That survey found that Frey is deeply unpopular, but still leading Fateh by 5 points.

In their phone and text poll of over 800 voters, Frey was the first choice of voters, at 34%, followed by Fateh with 28%, Davis at 10% and Hampton at 5%, while 17% were undecided. The poll by Public Policy Polling had a margin of error of 3.3%.

Minneapolis for the Many Chair Chelsea McFarren said people are tired of Frey, whom she called untrustworthy, “deeply divisive” and toxic.

“I wouldn’t be feeling too confident if I were him and I was polling this closely being the incumbent,” she said.

Fateh has the best chance of beating Frey, McFarren said, and has energized young people, working-class families and renters.

Fateh’s name recognition improved from 46% in May to 71% in August, according to their poll, but voters did not have a particularly favorable view of any of the top four DFL candidates. Fateh had the highest favorable rating, at 36%, followed by Frey at 33%, Davis at 31% and Hampton at 25%.

Frey’s unfavorable rating was 51%, for a net approval rating of over negative 20%, while Fateh, Davis and Hampton had positive approval ratings.

All of Mpls Executive Director Jacob Hill dismissed the Minneapolis for the Many survey as a “cheap PPT poll” and said his PAC’s polling shows Frey’s approval rating has stayed relatively constant since 2021, ranging between 44% and 48%.

Hill said Davis and Hampton “kneecapped their own campaigns” by forming an alliance with Fateh, because they’ve been unable to separate themselves from Fateh, a democratic socialist who’s the most progressive candidate on the ballot.

Hill said their polling shows support for Hampton — the most moderate of the three challengers — redistributes to Frey more than Fateh, while Davis’ gets split.

“Their idea that they can just stack Fateh, Davis, and Hampton’s numbers together is not realistic,” Hill said.

Indeed, a poll by a PAC supporting Fateh found his support nearly doubled in three months — during which the national media got interested in his short-lived endorsement by Minneapolis Democrats — while Davis and Hampton’s numbers remained virtually unchanged.

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