A new poll shows Lori Lightfoot running away with her lead over Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle ahead of the upcoming April 2 runoff election.
The poll, sampling 400 likely Chicago voters, asked who they would vote for if the election were held that day.
Fifty-eight percent chose Lightfoot and 30 percent chose Preckwinkle. Twelve percent remain undecided.
The poll was conducted by the Stand for Children IL PAC, a non-partisan education advocacy group, via interviews on landlines and cell phones in the two days following the general election. The poll has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.9 percent.
Lightfoot secured a surprising upset over several well-positioned candidates in the Feb. 26 election, taking home 17.5 percent of the vote, compared to Preckwinkle’s 16 percent.
Lightfoot surged late in the race after she was endorsed by the Chicago Sun-Times. An NBC5/Telemundo poll conducted in the days after the newspaper’s endorsement and just two weeks before the election, put her at 10 percent and had Preckwinkle in the lead with 14 percent.
“Both candidates have made education a priority of their campaigns," said Mimi Rodman, the PAC’s chairperson, in a statement. "The question is which of them can truly deliver and put words into action."
