Today’s Boston Globe offers mostly very good news for Mayor Tom Menino, who holds a commanding lead over challenger Michael Flaherty in a new Globe poll with just over three weeks until the Nov. 3 election. Menino held a 20 point lead in the survey of 553 randomly selected Boston residents, with 52 percent of respondents saying they would vote for the four-term incumbent if the election were held today while 32 percent said they would vote for Flaherty.

Flaherty has closed the gap since a poll in May that showed Menino with a 61-23 lead, but it’s still hard to see how the South Boston city councilor can catch Menino without some development that dramatically shakes up the race.  

Some random observations from the poll:

  • More than half of all respondents said Menino’s heavy handed control over development decisions has made the city a better place to live and one-quarter of those polled said his involvement made no difference. The numbers suggest that for all the hammering away at Menino by Flaherty and preliminary election contenders Sam Yoon and Kevin McCrea over his micromanaging of private development and the secretive ways of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, residents by and large aren’t too worked up over the process of how development occurs in Boston. City residents are apparently more concerned with development results than how they were arrived at, and they by and large like what they see.
  • Fully half of all those surveyed said they have considered moving out of Boston to send their children to public schools in another community. This continues to be the most damning verdict on Menino’s tenure — and probably the most frustrating for any rivals. Why? Because 62 percent of those polled also said they thought things in Boston are generally going in the right direction. Frustration with the quality of the Boston public schools has been so persistent for so long that residents don’t seem to hold the mayor accountable on this issue, despite the fact that Boston moved to a system of full mayoral control over schools just before Menino took office in 1993. Menino should be vulnerable on school issues, but for that to happen Flaherty would need to make a strong case for how he would truly shake up the education status quo. In other cities where leaders are making bold moves to reform struggling urban school systems that has almost invariably involved a willingness to challenge the grip of teachers’ unions. Don’t hold your breath. 
  • The controversy over thousands of emails that were deleted by top Menino aide Michael Kineavy in apparent violation of state law has made one third of those polled more likely to vote against Menino, an indication that the issue has hurt the mayor with a chunk of the electorate. But who, one wonders, are the 4 percent of those polled who said the potentially illegal destruction of public records made them more likely to vote for Menino?