Poll: More Than Half Of Chicagoans Think Rahm Emanuel Should Resign

By Kate Shepherd in News on Dec 8, 2015 4:40PM

Photo by City of Chicago/Brooke Collins

More than half of Chicagoans surveyed in a recent poll think Mayor Rahm Emanuel should resign and more than two-thirds disapprove of the way he is handling his job as mayor.

A new automated poll of likely Chicago 2016 voters from Ogden & Fry shows that more than 60 percent don't believe his claims that he never watched the Laquan McDonald dash-cam video until its public release on Nov. 24, according to Politico. 67 percent of the 739 people surveyed disapprove of his performance as mayor.

When asked if Emanuel should resign over the handling of the McDonald case, 51 percent said yes, 29 percent said no and 19.6 percent were undecided. This was after he fired CPD Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy last week.

"We're in the heat of emotion, it's not uncommon to see spikes," pollster Tom Swiss told Politico. "It's hard not to see that video and not have a strong emotional response to it."

Emanuel will not resign despite the public backlash and repeated calls for him to step down, he told Politico last week.

In the last week, he's attempted to clean house with the "resignations" of McCarthy, Independent Police Review Authority head Scott Ando and CPD Chief of Detectives Dean Andrews.

"The mayor is challenged not by a poll, but the job of addressing a broken system," Pete Giangreco, an Emanuel campaign spokesman, said in a statement to Politico. "That is the job this moment in our city demands and one he is absolutely committed to seeing through."