A majority of Philadelphians approve of Mayor Cherelle Parker and think the city is on the right track, poll finds

Sixty-three percent of Philadelphians approve of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s performance, and 59% believe the city is headed in the right direction, according to a new poll from Pew Charitable Trusts.

Residents’ views on the city’s trajectory have improved significantly since the last time Pew surveyed Philadelphians in 2022, when only 36% said the city was on the right track amid the coronavirus pandemic and gun violence crisis.

“Overall during the pandemic … views on the city became more pessimistic, and that has changed since our 2022 polling,” said Katie Martin, project director of Pew’s Philadelphia Research and Policy Initiative. “People are much more optimistic than they were, although they still cite public safety as their key concern.”

Sixty-one percent of respondents listed “crime, drugs, and public safety” as the most pressing issue facing the city. That was down from 70% in 2022, but still far and away Philadelphians’ top concern.

Meanwhile, 56% of survey respondents said they felt “completely safe” or “pretty safe” in their neighborhoods at night. That was an increase from 44% in 2022.

Pew’s Philadelphia Resident Survey surveyed 2,289 adults from Jan. 2 to March 10. The margin of error was 2.7 percentage points.

Pew does not include a mayoral approval question in every iteration of its Philadelphia survey, making comparisons difficult.

In August 2016, eight months after Jim Kenney took office as mayor, 53% approved of his performance. Pew did not ask an overall approval rating of Kenney in its 2022 survey.

In January 2010, two years into Michael A. Nutter’s mayoral tenure, he also received a 53% approval rating. Nutter’s popularity peaked at 60% two years later, in February 2012.

At 63%, Parker’s approval rating was the highest Pew has recorded since beginning the Philadelphia Resident Survey in 2009, but it was within the margin of error of Nutter’s.

Parker said she was “appreciative and humbled by the Pew survey results.”

“It reaffirms my commitment and strengthens my resolve to ensure that public safety remains the number one priority,” the mayor said in a statement. “However, there is no resting here and we have much more work to do.”

Parker, the city’s first female mayor, took office in January 2024 after making public safety her top issue on the campaign trail. She has overseen a period of rapidly declining rates of gun violence, a trend that began before she took office and that has followed national patterns.

Demographically, the groups that Pew found gave Parker the highest marks align with perceptions about her political base. She received particularly high approval ratings from older Philadelphians, Black residents, those with a high school education or less, and people with relatively low incomes.

Parker often says she wants Philadelphians to be able to “see, touch, and feel” the results of her efforts to make Philadelphia the “safest, cleanest, greenest” big city in the U.S., and many of her initiatives since taking office have been highly visible, such as adding a second day of trash collection in many parts of the city and building a wellness center in Northeast Philadelphia that can house drug users arrested in Kensington and other parts of the city.

» READ MORE: Did Mayor Parker’s plan to clean every block work?

The mayor herself is also considerably more publicly visible than Kenney, particularly in the final days of his administration.

She has had two notable public embarrassments, both involving Philadelphia sports teams. Last fall, she helped shepherd through City Council the 76ers’ controversial proposal to build an arena in Center City, only to see the team back out of the deal weeks after it was approved.

And, less consequentially, she made national headlines for an unfortunate misspelling at a January pep rally during the Eagles’ Super Bowl run that was instantly emblazoned on T-shirts and memes: E-L-G-S-E-S!

Although Philadelphians are now more confident the city is headed in a positive direction, they remain unconvinced that Parker can turn things around on some of the most important issues, Pew found.

Only 20% of residents, for instance, said they think the mayor can make a “major difference” in addressing poverty, while 38% she can make a “minor difference” and 40% “no real difference.” Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate of the 10 largest U.S. cities, about 22%, according to the Census Bureau.

Residents were similarly pessimistic when it came to her ability to make headway on job creation, and curbing the opioid crisis.

The area where respondents were most optimistic change was possible was “clean and green”: Thirty-four percent said Parker could make a major difference when it comes to the city’s cleanliness, and 41% said a minor difference was possible. Only 24% said her efforts were likely to amount to naught.

In general, city trash collection received good grades, with 81% of respondents “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied.”

Where respondents lived made a significant difference in how they felt about the city. Eighty-nine percent of Center City residents and 84% of Northwest Philadelphians said their neighborhoods were “good” or “excellent” places to live.

On the other end of the spectrum, less than half, or 45%, of North Philadelphia residents said the same.

Graphics editor John Duchneskie contributed to this article.