While Mayor London Breed has a tiny lead in first-choice votes in the latest Chronicle poll, Daniel Lurie pulls ahead in second-choice votes, and Aaron Peskin has surprisingly leapfrogged Mark Farrell for third place.

The polling for the November 5 mayoral election has at times showed Mark Farrell leading, Daniel Lurie leading, or Mayor London Breed winning reelection. So the race has been shifting from month-to-month, or even week-to-week. But now barely two weeks from Election Day, the Chronicle is out with the first poll that ranks candidates not only by their first-choice votes, but also their second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-choice votes, the way the votes will actually be tallied in ranked-choice voting.

And that poll shows that Breed has 24% of first-choice votes, barely ahead of Lurie, who has 23% of first-choice votes. But the poll also has Lurie winning based on his strength in second-choice votes, and ultimately delivering him a surprisingly comfortable 56%-44% win.

The graphic in the above tweet breaks down the polling numbers, and how each round of ranked-choice voting would break down. The lowest-ranked candidate gets knocked out in each round, with their voters’ second-choice candidates redistributed as that voter’s new top choice. Through five rounds of this, Lurie finishes ahead of London Breed.

The poll was conducted by the independent firm Sextant Strategies & Research on October 15-16, and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.  

“Breed showed some comeback between the first two surveys, but as the race began to take shape and people began to focus on what the next four years of the city will look like, that momentum was blunted,” Sextant Strategies president Jonathan Brown told the Chronicle. “Lurie’s advertising, as well as the other candidates’, helped make that happen.”

Indeed, the nonprofit executive and Levis Strauss heir has put $8 million of his own money into his campaign, a $15 million campaign that is the most expensive mayoral campaign in SF history. And he’s cranking out gob-smacking volumes of mailers and advertisements.

But the most surprising thing about this Chronicle poll is that it has Aaron Peskin cruising past Farrell for third place, with Farrell being eliminated before Peskin is. The poll is not good news for Farrell at all, perhaps showing his support softening amidst a number of campaign finance impropriety allegations.

But if Farrell, or any other candidate doesn't like this poll, they can just look at a different one.

A new poll just published on KQED has Peskin tied with Lurie for first place, with both receiving 25% of first-choice votes. That poll by Public Policy Polling does not go into second-, third-choice votes. But you better believe Peskin is crowing about those polling results.

And Farrell has another new poll that he’s very happy with the results of. That one was commissioned by the political pressure group and PAC TogetherSF Action (of “That's Fentalife!” fame), who have endorsed Farrell and have been accused of coordinating with his campaign, though the poll was conducted by the independent firm Lieberman Data & Insights.

And TogetherSF’s claim above that the poll “shows a 3-way tie” is perhaps a little disingenuous, as the three-way tie is for second place.  Breed is ahead by four points for first place in that poll.

So whoever you may be supporting for mayor, you can pretty much pick your poll that shows your favored candidate winning. That means that this is probably still a very dynamic race, and the only thing we can predict with confidence is that we’re probably not going to know the winner on the night of the November 5 election. And sigh, it’s probably not the only race whose outcome we won’t know that night.

Related: Mayoral Candidates Scramble for Asian Vote, and Polls Say Mayor Breed Is Winning That Vote for Now [SFist]

Images: (Left) DanielLurie.com, (Right) LondonForMayor.com