More than half of D.C. residents want Mayor Vincent Gray to resign, a poll released Wednesday night revealed.
The study showed that 54 percent of registered voters – and 48 percent of black voters – think Gray should exit the mayor’s office in the aftermath of disclosures that he benefited from an illegal shadow campaign in 2010. The Washington Post commissioned the poll.
The mayor’s support has also slipped among those who backed him over Adrian Fenty in 2010. The Post found that 39 percent of Gray’s supporters in that Democratic primary contest now want him to leave the public arena.
Gray’s approval rating stands at 29 percent, the survey said, though 34 percent of residents have a favorable view of the mayor.
But those favorable views don’t extend fully to whether residents believe Gray is “honest and trustworthy.” Only 22 percent of residents were willing to describe Gray, who ran for mayor on a platform of ethical governance, with those words.
D.C. voters are also watching the progress of the probes into the Gray campaign and two now-ousted city lawmakers closely. Nearly seven in 10 voters said they are monitoring developments very or somewhat closely.
Those polled also aren’t buying allegations some have leveled that the investigations are racially driven. Nearly four in five voters said they believed the probes had proceeded in a fair manner, a view shared by 72 percent of black voters.
The Post polled more than 1,000 voters, and the study had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.
