PHILADELPHIA —An overwhelming majority of Philadelphians feel safe in their neighborhoods and more than 40% believe that the city has become cleaner under the leadership of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, according to a new poll, suggesting that city residents see significant progress on the mayor’s key campaign promises.

However, there is not a broad citywide consensus on Parker’s tenure as she heads into an expected reelection campaign next year, and there were also red flags for her and the city, including alarmingly bad evaluations of the public school system.

That is according to a recent Suffolk University/Philadelphia Inquirer poll that surveyed 500 Philadelphians across the city on issues including crime, quality of life, city services, and education. More than half of those surveyed said they would rate Philly as a “good” or “excellent” place to live.

About 83% of residents reported feeling safe in the city just five years after record-high rates of gun violence in Philadelphia, with respondents in neighborhoods most affected by violent crime most likely to say they feel that crime has decreased since Parker took office in 2024.

However, the persistent opioid crisis in Kensington remains a sore spot for the city, with more than half of respondents saying that the mayor’s strategy to address the entrenched open-air drug market in the neighborhood is not working.

And the city’s public school system emerged as a primary concern, with 45% saying they would rate Philadelphia’s schools as of “poor” quality, while more than half of the poll’s respondents said that schools play an important role in whether they stay in the city or move out.

The survey was conducted last week, after the financially struggling Philadelphia School District and its controversial school closure plan dominated local headlines for more than a month.

David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, said the poll provides Philadelphia policymakers with a blueprint for how to keep people in the city: continue progress on crime and improve the public schools.

“If that happens,” he said, “then Philadelphia is poised to be a renaissance city.”

Parker said in a statement that her administration “values both qualitative and quantitative information.”

“The real-life, lived experiences of people in this city are what matters most,” she said. “Polling is not my North Star in how I govern. My solutions always come from the ground up, from what people can see, touch, and feel.”

For Parker’s political fortunes, the poll represents mixed results. It showed that the substantial base of support that lifted the mayor to office in 2023 is holding up, with Black residents and older Philadelphians most likely to say they have a favorable view of her and see progress on her campaign promises.

But Parker has not consolidated broad citywide enthusiasm, with 44% of respondents saying that they have a favorable view of the mayor and 35% saying they have an unfavorable one. That is positive territory for Parker more than halfway through her first term, but not overwhelmingly so.

Her biggest vulnerability is with young people — respondents under age 45 were more likely to say that they had an unfavorable view of the mayor than a favorable one. White residents were also more sour on Parker.

Paleologos said that the poll shows there are “pockets of strength” that make Parker, a centrist Democrat, electorally strong, but that he would not consider her support broad-based.

Those results come as the city’s most prominent progressive political groups are weighing whether to mount a challenge against Parker next year. As the incumbent, Parker would be the hands-down favorite in any contest, as no Philadelphia mayor has lost a campaign for reelection in modern history.

But some leaders of the city’s left-leaning coalition see an opening amid gains in Philadelphia and elsewhere. For example, New York City voters last year elected progressive Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and last week, Democrats in Washington, D.C., picked Janeese Lewis George, like Mamdani a democratic socialist.

Aren Platt, the executive director of People for Parker, the mayor’s political arm, said in a statement that Parker’s support “has always been under-counted, especially in public polling.” He cited polling conducted during the 2023 mayor’s race that showed her tied with or trailing her top opponents in the Democratic primary, in which Parker prevailed by a commanding 10 percentage points.

Platt also said the Suffolk University/Inquirer poll is not necessarily predictive of how the mayor could perform in a theoretical reelection race. The poll was of Philadelphia residents, not likely primary voters.

“This poll may reflect the demographics of Philadelphia, but elections are decided by the people who show up to vote on election day,” he said. “In Philadelphia, those are two very different universes.”

The poll also showed relatively positive marks for one of Parker’s potential successors: City Council President Kenyatta Johnson. He has said that he supports Parker for reelection, but Philadelphia mayors are limited to two terms and Johnson is widely seen as a potential future contender for the city’s top office.

Overall, 48% of respondents said they had a favorable view of Johnson and only 12% had an unfavorable one. Johnson is also far less publicly known than Parker, with 40% of those surveyed saying they had either never heard of him or were undecided on their view of him.

Negative reviews of the Philadelphia School District

About one in five respondents said that schools and education are the most important issue in the city, making it second only to crime. Paleologos said that is somewhat unique to Philadelphia — in other major cities where he has polled public opinion, he said, respondents often rank jobs and the economy as greater concerns.

Nearly 75% of respondents said they would rate the quality of Philadelphia’s public schools as “fair” or “poor.” Younger residents were far more likely than older ones to rate the schools as “poor,” and more than half of all respondents said the public schools are an important factor in determining whether they and their family stay in the city or move away.

“That’s a big number,” Paleologos said. “That research alone gives the policymakers a bird’s-eye view of what they need to do to keep people here in Philadelphia.”

The survey also shows that residents see issues across the school system. When asked what should be the highest priority in improving the schools, there was little consensus among respondents: About a third said teacher pay, while a quarter said school safety, and another quarter said building repairs.

Just 4.4% said the highest priority should be instituting year-round school, an initiative that Parker campaigned on and that the district is piloting.

A spokesperson for the school district did not respond to a request for comment.

The quality of Philadelphia’s public schools has been a perennial concern, and city leaders have long pointed to the chronic underfunding of the Philadelphia School District. In 2023, the state Commonwealth Court ruled that Pennsylvania had for years unconstitutionally deprived students in low-wealth districts of an adequate education, and state lawmakers are now funding schools under a new formula.

District leaders have undertaken significant efforts in recent years to improve academic performance. There have been some positive results, including improvement on test scores and a recent report that said Philadelphia School District students’ learning post-pandemic was tops in the nation among large urban districts.

The district also earlier this year adopted a sweeping, $3.3 billion effort to renovate and modernize 169 schools. That multiyear plan was hotly debated, as it included the closure of 17 schools.

Parker has expended significant political capital on the school district this year. She unsuccessfully fought for a $1-per-ride tax on rideshare services like Uber to generate recurring revenue for the district so that it could stave off hundreds of planned staff cuts.

After City Council rejected that plan, she agreed with lawmakers to divert existing money out of the city budget and commit $216 million in additional funding to the district over the next five years.

Parker said the Commonwealth Court “got it right” in declaring that low-wealth districts like Philadelphia’s are chronically underfunded.

“If we had all the resources we need, we’d see even more enhanced improvements in our schools,” Parker said. “I’ll never stop fighting for our children and their right to a high-quality education.”

Crime is the top concern, but most residents feel safe

Despite rates of violent crime in the city plummeting to record lows under Parker, public safety remains the top concern for three in 10 Philadelphia residents, suggesting that people who live in the city are still anxious about crime.

When asked about whether they believe crime in their neighborhood has increased or decreased over the last two years, a third of respondents said they believe it has increased, about 32% said it has decreased, and 28% said they believe it has stayed the same.

A closer look at the results shows that a plurality of respondents in the neighborhoods most affected by violent crime, including North and West Philadelphia, believe that crime has decreased.

The respondents most likely to say that they believe crime in their area has increased live in Northeast Philly. But public data maintained by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office show overall crime has decreased there, too. There are five Northeast Philadelphia police districts, and the total number of crime incidents reported to police declined in all of them between 2023, the year before Parker took office, and last year.

Despite the mixed poll results, a vast majority of Philadelphians — nearly 83% — said that they feel safe in their own neighborhood.

That is good news for Parker, who ran for office as a tough-on-crime Democrat amid a historic wave of gun violence and who vowed often to “bring order back to our city.”

Parker said in a statement that the polling results are evidence that her public safety strategy is working, calling it her “number one priority.”

She also vowed to continue her administration’s efforts in Kensington, the epicenter of the city’s opioid crisis. The Parker administration has deployed a multipronged approach, including increased police patrols in the neighborhood and an expansion of offerings for people in addiction.

There have been some signs of progress in Kensington, including the lowest gun violence rate in a generation.

But 53% of poll respondents said they do not believe the mayor’s efforts there are working, and those who live closest to the problem were the least supportive. In the region that encompasses the Lower Northeast and the river wards, where Kensington is located, 68% of people said Parker’s strategy is not working while only 18% said it is.

The mayor’s overall favorability was also lowest in that area of the city, the only region where more respondents said they had an unfavorable view of the mayor than a favorable one.

Parker acknowledged that there is “much more work to do” in Kensington and said that “changing culture and going to war with the status quo is never easy.“

Parker’s ‘clean and green’ message is landing

For a city derisively called “Filthadelphia” and where cleanliness has been a longtime concern, a significant number of people seem to think Philadelphia is getting cleaner.

When asked about trash and litter, 41% of poll respondents said they believe the city has gotten cleaner over the last two years. Just 19% said Philadelphia has gotten dirtier, and 38% said it has stayed the same.

Those are positive marks for a mayor whose slogan is “safer, cleaner, greener” and who has instituted new programs including twice-weekly trash pickup in the densest parts of the city.

Despite those efforts, Philadelphians gave worse reviews to the overall quality of city services in their neighborhood. About six in 10 respondents said the quality was either “fair” or “poor,” while 40% said “good” or “excellent.”

—Staff writer Michelle Baruchman contributed to this article.

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