Marquette poll director Charles Franklin on Biden vs. Trump in Wisconsin

Greetings and welcome to the recombobulation area.

My name is Dan Schaeffer, thank you for joining us.

The Marquette University Law School Poll is the gold standard poll for elections and

public policy in the state of Wisconsin, and the latest poll was released just yesterday.

To discuss the results as he will do after every poll in this election year is Charles

Franklin, the executive director, Charles.

Thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the recombobulation area.

Thank you, Dan. I'm always pleased to be here.

So new poll yesterday, let's start with just some of your initial takeaways.

There's obviously a lot of different issues that you poll, a lot of different candidates,

campaigns, things like that. What were some of your initial takeaways

after gathering the results for this one?

Well, start with the presidential race.

It's still a very close race.

Trump's support ticked up two points from January to 51, 49 for Biden.

When we ask people to choose between the two, to have to choose between the two,

we've seen this as a one or two point race for several months now.

And you know, look at the history of Wisconsin presidential elections recently.

We'd be really surprised to not see it so close.

So hardly a surprise, but in keeping with what we've found before.

Also in the five way race, including third party candidates, it's a one point race still,

41 for Trump, 40 for Biden with 19% going to Kennedy, Weston, Stein.

That's a little bit of a tightening.

It was a three point Trump advantage in January with the five way race.

You're seeing the third party candidates fall off just a little bit

between January and now.

But the Senate race is also very interesting.

This is the first poll we've done since Eric Houghty got in the race.

And so it's our first look at it.

And we basically find that Baldwin seems to have a modest lead,

52 to 47 by one measure with registered voters.

But with likely voters, we find it as a 50, 50 tie.

And I think that's closer than might have been expected.

This early in the Senate race while Eric Houghty still not well known in the state.

That's a little more complicated on the Senate side, unlike the presidential side.

With the president, we saw no difference between registered voters and likely voters.

But on the Senate, it does make a bit of a difference.

And it also matters if we ask if you're undecided.

Well, who would you vote for if you had to choose?

That's where we get the 52, 47 with registered and the 50, 50 with likely's.

But in the unleamed question where we still let people say I'm undecided,

Baldwin leads by 7, 44, 37 with a whopping 18% undecided with registered voters.

And with likely voters, her lead is 45, 41 with again still 15% undecided.

So I think that's worth paying a little bit of attention to in the Senate race.

That when we push people, we do end up with a close race or even a tie.

But there's an awful lot of people out there that haven't thought about the Senate race yet.

And on that first question, seeing 18 or 15% undecided is maybe more revealing about the race.

than when we push people to choose.

Yeah, that's one of the things that I wanted to ask about with this poll,

because it was something you highlighted was this quote-unquote unleamed vote that you talked about.

Can you break that down for us? What exactly does that mean?

And how does that factor in? And why is that important at this stage in April in this poll?

Exactly. The standard question that we've always asked is, would you vote for

Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat or Eric Huff, the Republican, or haven't you decided?

And that's the basic form of the question for every race that we ask.

And it includes that invitation to say, I haven't decided.

I've liked that question over the long haul because it does show us that people

haven't all made up their minds or haven't tuned into the race. So I think that's revealing.

But when you leave those undecideds just hanging out there, especially closer to the election,

how they decide at the last minute to vote can make a big difference.

And I think it was one of the things that we got wrong in 2016, where we didn't follow up with

undecideds and say, but if you had to choose, who would you vote for? The exit polls in 2016 show that

a lot of late deciding voters swung to Trump disproportionately. We'll never know now if I had asked

the follow-up, but if you had to choose, what would you do? Would we have gotten that 2016

race a little bit better or would it not have really helped? But that's the reason why I added

after 2016 the leaned vote, the follow-up. And I and most pollsters now report that leaned vote

as our top line number with that, but it also means that that that number omits the undecideds

and how they're breaking. One of the things I find valuable is to take the undecideds

and look at their second answer, are they leaning more to Biden, leading more to Trump,

more to Baldwin or more to Havtee? Because I think that's informative about people who are

sort of on defense and haven't made up their minds. But as this example, it does complicate

things for readers to understand that we have four different numbers on the Senate race.

We have unleamed for likely unleamed for registered and we get four different numbers that run

from a seven point Baldwin lead to a dead tie. You can complain that I should make up my mind,

but I think actually I would like, especially for your readers and listeners to see this as

providing more understanding of the uncertainty about where the race stands. Even if it does

mean there's not a single number and I'm not going to tell you any of the others. I've got four

numbers and I'm going to tell you all four of them, even if that complicates the story.

That's the right. You're the most transparent pollster in America now, right? Is that the distinction

you've earned this year? It does. It may mean that you can see right through me, but

so yeah, so it's a lot of context with, you know, the registered verse, likely voter,

the unleamed verses, you know, undecideds. And so, you know, there's a lot of context for those of us,

you know, for example, who might write a breakdown of every new poll, a lot of information for us to

parse. So I'm still working through that myself, but I wanted to just focus for a little bit here

on the Biden Trump head to head match up, you know, this being that it is a rematch. And not

only that it is a rematch, this is the third presidential election in a row that Trump will be on

the ballot. Joe Biden was also, you know, obviously very well known as being the vice president

Barack Obama's administration. So we all know these two guys extremely well. So given that,

how much should we really expect to change over the course of this? You know, I feel like every

time I check in, you know, with, with the results on this race, it's, well, it's Biden and Trump

and Wisconsin. It's basically 50, 50. There aren't a lot of undecideds because people know these guys

so well. And here we are 50, 50, nobody's super thrilled about this head to head. I guess,

save for the very core Trump voters. But, you know, again, do we really expect much of this

to change and has it changed at all? I think this smart money bed is that we don't see much

change that it's a game of inches, a little bit of an advantage one way or a little bit of advantage

of the other. And from a pollster's point of view, the bad news is all of those changes will be

inside the margin of error. And so we're going to be uncertain about the race. A one point race

could easily tip either way between the poll and election day. Our average error on the Marquette

poll is 2.2 points on the margin. And so anything that we have inside of two points, I think you

would very readily decide is very uncertain about who's ultimately going to win.

You know, when we look at the 2020 election, where enormous things took place with first the

pandemic, then the George Floyd killing and the riots following that or the protests following that.

And just in general, conducting a national election in the midst of the pandemic,

um, academics at UCLA wrote a wonderful book about the 2020 election. They studied using

weekly polling through almost two years leading up to the campaign. And their book concluded that

nothing changed despite all of that. With all the data in the world, they didn't see movement.

And they coined the term calcification, calcification, that our politics are calcified, meaning not

only does it not move very much, but it's also really closely divided. So a little bit of movement

flips you from Trump to Biden. And this time a little bit of movement could flip you from Biden

to Trump. It's not because big changes are taking place because groups of people are massively

changing their views, but it's because we're a very evenly divided state in Wisconsin as well as

country. And people are more embedded in their political views than they had been maybe 50 years ago.

So little changes that are going to be not outside the margin of error is going to make

interpretation very hard other than just to keep saying, wow, it still looks like a close election.

Now it could be wrong. There could be something that happens that things do shift,

but the track record of most of the Trump years doesn't lead you to expect to see big shifts in

opinion. I will say that some things have changed that bear attention. Trump's net favorability rating

has gone up quite a lot. It's still net negative, but it's gone up a lot since November of 2022,

while Biden's has gone down a lot in that same period, not quite as much as Trump's.

But the upshot is in this poll, Trump is actually less unpopular than Biden is by a few points,

just a few points, but those are long-term trends, not one poll being off, but a continued shift

over multiple polls. And it does cast the election as more even between those two than it looked

like it would be in November of 2022.

Yeah. Another thing that I noticed from the poll, I think you pointed this out in the

presentation yesterday as well, was the independent voters in this poll. The last poll that you did

earlier this year, independent voters favored Biden by I think around 8% or something like that.

And this one they favored Trump by double digits and then some. So is that the type of

pull to pull change you think would be more of an anomaly or do you think this is the type of

thing that you might expect independent voters in Wisconsin to ping pong back and forth a few

times throughout this campaign? I think it's more the norm with independence. And that's coming from

two things. The first is they're independent. They, by definition, don't feel closer to either

party. They tend to be fairly alienated from politics. And they're not obsessive political

folks that follow politics all the time while still being disgusted with it all. They're disgusted

with it all and follow it occasionally. So that is a substantive reason why we should expect

independence to swing from poll to poll somewhat erratically because the force is working on them.

Don't have those stabilizing partisan views that keep Democrats in line and keep Republicans in

line. But then there's simply a size issue. Independence make up about 12% of registered voters,

only about 8% of likely voters. So it's a very small sample size. And so you should actually expect

up to a 10 point swing for independence from month to month simply because of the sample size

being what it is. So those two things together are a recipe for large swings with independence.

If I had my drawthers, I probably wouldn't present results for independence except in very guarded

terms, but you can't look at partisanship without looking at independence. The other thing is,

of course, whether it's 8% or 12%, that's still a bigger group than the margin between the two

candidates anytime. So you don't want to ignore independence, but you just need to admit that

both their behavior can shift more than other groups. And the small sample size means we're more

uncertain about where they stand at any moment. Last piece of perspective, you're exactly right as

our data show this big shift in independent vote between January and April. But with all of that

independent swing, Trump went up two percentage points. Right. And so the net effect of a big swing

with independence at most was just a two point edge for Trump. Biden's vote didn't change at all

despite that independent shift. So yes, when you single out that one group, it was a lot of change

and there's some reasons for it, both substantive and methodological. But let's not overstate how big

the net impact was. Yeah, interesting stuff with that. And it's going to be, this is Wisconsin,

right? Everything is so much on the margins. And we've had four of our last six presidential

elections decided by less than 1% here. So it's any movement with independence could matter,

any movement with what was happening with the third party vote, like you mentioned, might matter

as well. So I want to move on though to the US Senate election here, being that this is the

first poll that you've conducted since Eric Hubby has formally announced that he was running. He was

kind of, he's basically been running for quite a while now. But if the formal announcement came

in late February. And so this is the first poll with him having, you know, introduced himself

two voters, reintroduced himself with his campaign right now, not facing any other Republicans in

the primary. We'll see if that change it. Well, not facing any Republicans that you were pulling

at least. I think there are a couple fringe candidates perhaps running, but they did not make this

particular poll. But right now it seems like he's got a pretty clear path to being their Republican

nominee in this race for Senate. And but still it's, it's a long road ahead for him because he's

got the poll showed that in his favorability rating more than half of voters did not yet have an

opinion of the Republican Senate candidate. So early stages of this race, the first time you've

been able to pull it since he's entered the race. What are your summer takeaways? Yeah.

So we already talked about the vote and how that depends on exactly how the questions asked.

I think that what's interesting on the Senate side and let's start with Houghty is that his

net approval is negative five 19 favorable 24 unfavorable. But 56% say they don't know enough to

have an opinion about him. That's notable that it's 56% because it was 82% that didn't have an

opinion in January. So I think you'd have to say that this first couple of months of him being

actively in the race has boosted awareness of him pretty substantially. But it's still well over

half that don't have an opinion yet. And those numbers will naturally change over the course of the

non incumbent candidates always start with high rates of people not knowing enough.

It is notable that he made as much movement in one in a couple of months as he did.

Tammy Baldwin is at plus five favorability 47 42 and 11% don't have an opinion about her.

That's also moved for her back in June 22% didn't have an opinion of Baldwin despite her being

at the end of their second term as US Senator. That again is on I'm going to say unfortunately you'd

like to have more of the public aware of their elected officials. But we've seen Baldwin's

don't know rate run in the mid 20s. We've seen Johnson in the low 30s at times. And as election

years approach more people become familiar with them. Remember that oh yes, I do have a US Senator.

And so Baldwin is well ahead of the game in in name recognition. But even she is building recognition

not just coasting on a on a very high underlying recognition. Also she had flipped to slightly negative

a net negative three in our January poll. But that's been her pattern. She has normally run

a handful of points more favorable than unfavorable. But in individual polls dipping into slight

negative territory two or three or four points net negative. So a little bit of recovery this time

but I don't think it represents any dramatic change in in her long term performance. Unlike

heard Ron Johnson has had periods when he's been quite net positive and other periods when he's

been quite net negative. So if Baldwin has a superpower, I think on this score, it's the stability of

her public image as being pretty evenly balanced and a little bit more positive than negative most

of the time. With Houghty the slight net negative at minus five doesn't mean much as long as 56%

don't know much about him. And I do think actually yet again down in the weeds.

Oddly enough, the lack of knowledge of Houghty may have helped him on the ballot question

because the ballot is framed as would you vote for Democrat Tammy Baldwin or Republican

Eric Houghty. So when 56% of the people don't know much about the Republican candidate being

supplied with. Oh, and this is the Republican's name probably benefits Houghty quite a bit as

opposed to if we had asked the question without party labels there. I think his lack of name

recognition would really hurt him. But I think in the ballot with that having the party label kind

of makes up for lack of information about him. The campaign of course will be all about convincing

voters what the relevant information is about Eric Houghty and about Tammy Baldwin. And we've got

201 days left to go for that. Yeah. So the one comparison I'm interested in looking at for Houghty

and his race is with Tim Michaels from a couple years ago. He also joined the race

kind of later in later than you might expect for a statewide candidate. Also somebody who had ran

before, also somebody who had done a lot of work outside the state of Wisconsin and came back

to run in this race. And it was I thought it was really interesting on the timetables of when

these candidates announced and when they were first pulled kind of lined up exactly. So

when you pull first pulled Michaels in the race after he announced in April of 2022, you had a

poll in June of 2022, similarly here with Houghty announcing in February having a poll in May. And I

noticed that their numbers were pretty similar all the way through with those favorabilities. So,

like you said, Houghty had the net minus 5, 19% favorable, 24% unfavorable, 56% having hadn't

heard enough for Michaels in the equivalent poll. He was at net even. He was at 22% favorable,

22% unfavorable, and 51% not having heard enough. So I thought that was an interesting way to look

at it because it was so similar and haven't heard enough part of it. As these candidates are

making their campaign launch and their introduction, it takes some time for that message to break through.

It really does. And in the case of Michaels, as you were coming up to the August primary,

there was still over 30% or over 25% at least at the end who's still just before the primary said

they hadn't heard enough about him. So it's surprising how long it takes for candidates to get

known. If we go back to 2018 and Tony Evers, there was actually a long period of slowly declining,

don't know about Evers. So it's not unique to any of these individual candidates. It just is a

long, slow process without a contested Republican primary or at least a seriously contested one.

Be interesting to see whether that affects how fast people learn about Humpty. He can focus on

the general election as the Baldwin campaign can focus on the on the general. Maybe that'll get

people knowing them more, but honestly, especially when we talk about voters who are not chronically

attuned to politics, a lot of this learning about the candidates will occur in the fall, not in

the spring and summer. All right. So just while we have a few more minutes here, I wanted to touch

on something that you are pulling in every poll now, the job approval for the governor,

the legislature, and the state supreme court. So just to go through the top line numbers there,

Tony Evers had a job approval of 52% disapprove 44% that is pretty similar to what we've been seeing

for quite some time with Evers being in that positive. The state legislature, 34% approve 56%

disapprove. And then the state supreme court right now we have 46% approve 39% disapprove with 15%

don't know on that one. What were some of your takeaways from doing this and in doing this,

you know, now for a few polls in a row with having all three branches of state government pulled here.

Evers continues to be a relatively popular governor in a time when a lot of politicians are not

popular. And that does stand out for him. You know, in the first term, he was running in the low 50s

most of the time until COVID hit. Then he had a big bump up in job approval throughout much of 2020.

In 22 in the reelection campaign, we saw him dip into slightly negative job approval territory,

but only slightly more disapproval than approval. But popped up again as soon as the 2022 election was over.

So he has had a pretty successful run on that. Whereas Scott Walker was usually very closely

balanced in approval. But in 2015, he dropped dramatically into disapproval territory,

slowly worked his way up to the 2018 reelection, which of course he lost to Evers. So he saw a lot

more shifting in Walker's job approval numbers compared to where Tony Evers has been pretty

solid. And if anything got a big boost during during COVID. So I think that's still an outstanding

thing for him. When you compare that with the legislature at 34 approved 56 disapprove,

you've got to say up front that legislatures are never loved by voters. We may love our

legislator, but we hate our legislature. And that holds up here. But since we do have Republican

controlled legislature, it's an obvious comparison to make. And Evers does a lot better there.

Legislatively, that doesn't buy Evers much in the way of legislative wins because of the bitter divide

between the governor and the legislature. The state Supreme Court, excuse me, we've only

started asking approval of this year for pretty obvious reasons. We'll continue to do that. And

on the one hand, it's net positive 46 for 39. That's a pretty decent rate. But 15% don't know.

That's not surprising. Whereas with Evers, it's only 3% don't know. And 9% don't know on the legislature.

The Supreme Court is not in the news every day. And it's not very many people roll over every

morning to check their news feeds for what's the Supreme Court news of the morning. So I do think

it's important to watch. We're going to have a very interesting Supreme Court election next year.

Very important one. And how the institution is viewed over this time is important as well as

ultimately, when the time comes, how the candidates are viewed for that now open Supreme Court seat

with Ann Walsh Bradley announcing her retirement. Yeah, it's, you know, it's an interesting look at the

way that the people and the voters in Wisconsin see the three branches of government. And like

you said, the Evers has been a pretty popular governor for the duration of his time as governor.

And it was just only during the campaign that he was in that negative. And I think it's

interesting also to look at, you know, Evers job approval in comparison to Biden's too. Considering

they're both Democrats, you know, Evers has the job approval that's 52% in the same poll where Joe Biden

has a job approval of 40% with 57% disapproval. So it's not like the state has swung into being

a red state all of a sudden because of Biden because we still have, you know, I think, I think

it's probably pretty safe to say that Tony Evers is probably the most popular politician in the state

of Wisconsin right now. But at the same time, you have these net negatives for Biden, you know,

a challenging race for Baldwin as well. So it's just interesting to note there. And then like you

said, the legislature, you know, legislatures, the Congress always has a terrible approval rating

as well. When they pull, you know, I think you and others will pull, you know, the presidency or

the Supreme Court. And I think Congress typically pulls the worst there as well. So, you know,

and that's an interesting thing too is, is our people responding to this for the body as a whole

or for their individual, you know, legislator, disapproval of the legislature there. Very interesting.

And then yeah, the state Supreme Court, it's growing prominence in the state political conversation

with the balance being what it is. And after flipping after Janet Pratt, say what's election

last year, you know, another potential open seat to determine the balance of the court next year.

I think it's to be really important to have this data over time to see where voters are with this.

But I think we're going to have to wrap up here for you. I want to be respectful of your time.

You've been very generous with it with our listeners here at the Reconbibulation Area. So,

thank you very much, Charles, for joining us. Any final thoughts to share with us as before we

before we let you go here? Yeah, I guess I want to come to one thing that we didn't get a chance

to talk about. And that is issues in which Canada is seen as better on the issues. Yeah.

There are two or three three really where Trump has an advantage, three where Biden has an

advantage, one where it's a toss up, though Trump's advantage is bigger on his issues and Biden's

smaller on his. But the real point I want to make and we can talk about this next time is between

15 and 26% tell us they don't see any difference between the candidates on those seven issues.

And that seems to me an area where we could see some change over the year as the campaign

communicates with voters about what those differences are and how they matter to voters.

Because while the undecided votes only 8%, if 15 to 26% of people really don't understand what

difference there is between the candidates, you could see some shifting on that. And I think we'll

come back to that. But I expect to keep asking that question to see how it changes over time.

Very good. Well, Charles Franklin, thank you so much for joining us at the Reconbobulation Area.

We'll see you for the next one. Thank you.

Thank you all for listening to this podcast. If you'd like to read my full breakdown of the latest

Marquette University Law School poll head on over to the Reconbulation Area. The Reconbulation Area

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