Inside Wisconsin Politics

Shifting fortunes in Wisconsin's tight 2026 governor's race

Shawn Johnson:
New polling shows Wisconsin’s race for governor remains close, but as you dig into the data, a lot has changed. And new fundraising numbers show Republicans with a massive edge fueled largely by three billionaire donors. This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. I’m Shawn Johnson here with my colleagues Anya van Wagtendonk, Zac Schultz and Rich Kremer in Eau Claire. Hey, everyone.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Hey.

Zac Schultz:

Hello.

Shawn Johnson:
So Marquette has given us a lot to talk about with this latest poll, and we’re going to get into some of the specifics here in a bit. But let’s just start with the top line results in the race for governor. Among likely voters, David Crowley leads Tom Tiffany 49% to 46%, with 5% undecided. A month ago, it was David Crowley 49% to Tiffany 44%, and 7% undecided, so it has tightened a bit. Among registered voters, it was tied a month ago, and it’s basically tied now Crowley is up by one. All of those numbers are well within the survey’s margin of error. Like I said, we’re going to get into some more specifics here. But Anya, we have seen how hard it is to poll in the year 2026 and poll accurately. We’ve also seen how people can overreact to polls, follow them like they’re a scoreboard rather than kind of a snapshot in time. With all that we know and all we’ve been through, why is the political world so focused on this poll, and what are they saying about it?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
It gives us something to kind of hold on to at a time that, again, we’ve been through a pretty wild primary season, we have one of the most watched governor’s races in the country, and what we do as reporters in the field is generally a little bit more of like a qualitative type of reporting. I feel like it’s easy when we go out and talk to people to kind of get a sense of vibes vibes-based reporting but this is a little bit more quantitative. And so all those caveats are true, and I think really important to keep in mind, and I think that we remind our listeners and our viewers about that as well. But with all of that, it does give us some amount of numbers to kind of point to. And later in the show, we’ll also get into campaign finance numbers. One of the kind of things to also be looking at is how much money are the candidates raising, and then how is that translating into these numbers? Because we pay attention to it, voters pay attention to it the campaigns really pay attention to what these numbers are saying, and it gives them also potentially sort of juice or areas to focus on in the final month of the campaign.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, Zac, it does still matter quite a bit, does it not? The Marquette poll, even though we know it could be wrong.

Zac Schultz:
Absolutely. I mean, margin of error is a real thing for a real reason. Everyone needs to take that with the grain of salt that it is. But a lot of times what you can do with these numbers is use them to understand better what the campaigns are doing and why they’re doing them, because they have this information before we do not necessarily this poll, but they have their own private polling numbers, and that impacts where they’re spending money, how they’re campaigning, how aggressively they’re going after someone. So you can use some of these numbers and go: Oh, that’s why I haven’t seen as many negative campaign ads from David Crowley. He’s had more of those positive, like with his family in the kitchen campaign ads. He’s ahead. He may not think he needs to run the negative ads yet. He’s still building up a positive image or he’s worried about favorability numbers. Why has Tom Tiffany switched entirely to negative campaign ads? Well, he’s behind. He knows he’s behind. These polls reflect that. So a lot of what we gauge as reporters is in that same vibe sense you were just talking about, Anya, does this feel like it fits what we’ve been getting a sense of from the campaigns on the ground?

Shawn Johnson:
So let’s look at another one of the findings from the poll that I think was really telling potentially maybe the most telling in this poll and that has to do with the candidates’ net favorability. That’s the percentage who view them favorably minus the percentage who view them unfavorably. Tom Tiffany was at -3 in August. Now he’s at -6. But David Crowley was at

+4 in August, now he’s at -13. Rich, what happened there?

Rich Kremer:
We kind of have to guess, but it could have something to do with a lot of these negative ads that we’re seeing from Tiffany and Republicans, third party groups, et cetera, with regard to Tiffany’s favorability ratings. What’s interesting about that shift for Crowley is Charles Franklin was talking about how it’s actually some Republicans who were undecided had kind of come home to the Republican Party from undecided. And whereas some of the independent likely voters, they went from undecided I’m sorry they went from Crowley to undecided. So there’s some movement there. And yeah, I think it reflects just what people are seeing on their TV screens, computer screens, whatever format they get their information from. I know personally that watching YouTube or the “Columbo” channel essentially, it’s been almost all negative Crowley ads that I’ve seen. I’ve seen a few going after Tiffany, but it ain’t coming from Crowley those are other third party groups.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, and I think I always,with a poll like this, there are numbers that I kind of expect oh, there’s a close race in Wisconsin, that sounds right but a drop that big, Zac, is pretty significant. We’re talking from positive favorability to starkly negative in a short amount of time.

Zac Schultz:
Yeah. I mean, it is that impact of the amount of negative ads and people waking up to the race. A lot of this is just viewers and voters who are saying, who, tuning out of politics altogether, sometimes due to the national environment not having a lot of good stories in it, especially from their political persuasion. Those kind of people tend to tune out and pay less attention to politics when it’s not favorable. I think of people watching a game. If your team’s not winning, you’re like: I don’t really care as much. That’s kind of how a lot of middle-ground voters act in a political year. But as it gets closer to the real thing, they wake up, they go: Oh, which side am I on, oh, I guess that’s not as bad. And they hear enough negative things that it does bring out the old partisan tribalism that exists in just about everybody that can be activated through the types of ads that we’re seeing repeatedly everywhere.The real numbers to look at are the independents, because typically there’s two things that win elections in Wisconsin it’s turnout and it’s independents. If your side is turning out more people, you’re going to win. If your side is winning with independent voters, you’re much more likely to win. So those are the numbers to really pay attention to. Like Rich said, with Charles Franklin indicating that it was actually Republicans that were more solidified on Tom Tiffany, then that’s not as big of a loss for Crowley, although every politician would love to see their favorability numbers in the positive. You look at the metrics: Almost all of them are negative. It’s very rare, Tony Evers being one of the rare politicians that can stay positive throughout an entire term, being reelected. He’s rare. Most of them are going to be underwater.

Shawn Johnson:
Anya, I’m kind of reminded of the way that David Crowley experienced the primary campaign, which is people just didn’t know who he was. And so he dropped out, and then he got back in, and they found out in a hurry what they needed to know, that he was kind of the centrist choice. But his story, his picture had not been painted. His story had not been told to voters. And it’s almost like his opponents are telling it for him.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah, and that’s, I think, a major part of any campaign, is you want to be the one defining yourself rather than being defined. But also, I think it speaks to, perhaps, a mistake that we made looking at those primary polling numbers, which was kind of not paying as much attention to all the undecided voters who were that was the only column that was ever taller than Francesca Hong’s support, right? And those people ended up just largely breaking for David Crowley. And so I think part of what we’re also seeing in this shift in favorability is just all of the people who check the box that says: I don’t know enough about either candidate to have an opinion, or I don’t know enough about Tiffany or about Crowley. And those people are starting to break in one direction or another because they are starting to get more information. The trick for both campaigns is to try to be the one who is controlling that information. But kind of tellingly, from this poll, a number of the independents that went away from Crowley did not go towards Tiffany. They just went towards more undecided. And so, I think this is still very much a race that is in question and not necessarily something that’s decided this far out.

Shawn Johnson:
So, Rich, one of the ways that you’re able to drive a message is with money. And we have massive amounts of money coming into this race in just the last couple of months. First of all, can you talk us through how the candidates for governor are doing there in terms of the latest fundraising reports that came out or were due by Wednesday at midnight? David Crowley and Tom Tiffany what’s the fundraising situation there?

Rich Kremer:
Well, it was pretty surprising. Tom Tiffany has had an edge in terms of fundraising throughout this campaign. Part of that is due to Crowley facing that primary and being out of the race for a little while. Meanwhile, Tiffany has been just raising money the whole time. So this latest reporting period, which is essentially July 1 through late September, Tiffany brought in $26 million, Crowley brought in $10 million. So that is quite a spread right there. The gap gets even bigger when you look at year-to-date figures.

Shawn Johnson:
OK, so we know that in Wisconsin we have this law that lets parties transfer unlimited amounts of money to the candidates. It’s a pretty important law in the way that campaigns are run here. So what was the breakdown there? How did the parties transfer money to Crowley and Tiffany?

Rich Kremer:
OK, so the Democratic Party transferred about $2.7 million to Crowley. Crowley had $4 million in transfers. The other transfers were coming from, like, unions or political action committees. Tiffany had $24 million in transfers from the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

Shawn Johnson:
OK. And let’s break that down a little bit more. The Republican Party of Wisconsin, I thought, had been struggling with fundraising. Where is it getting all this money?

Rich Kremer:
So, the Republican Party posted some good figures on its own, aside from the transfer 93% of their money in this reporting period came from three people. Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, they gave a combined $22 million. Those are the billionaire owners of Uihlein, the manufacturing supply company. And Diane Hendricks, who is the founder, the CEO of ABC Supply, I believe, she gave $5.6 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin. So you look at that that’s $27 million, almost $28 million. You look at Tiffany’s total raised and those transfers, it kind of tells you what’s going on here.

Shawn Johnson:
So kind of an open question here. But Anya, what happens when one side has all the money like this? It’s not something we’re exactly used to in a race for governor.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. I think we’re seeing kind of two things happen. One is that it does allow the Tiffany campaign just a lot more resources to flood the airwaves, to do that work of defining David Crowley like we talked about. But it also kind of creates this narrative spin moment for both campaigns, because both campaigns kind of want to accuse the other of being out of touch with the everyman and being sort of fueled by billionaires. And so we are seeing that spin moment happen right now. David Crowley was out in California earlier this week, and the Republican Party kind of had a field day with like: Look at him hobnobbing with these Hollywood elites and going to fundraisers. But anyone running for office needs to raise a ton of money. So now you see the Crowley campaign also coming out and saying: Look at all these billionaires that are backing Tom Tiffany. And so you’re seeing kind of this dance, again, between wanting to come across as a normal person, but also needing to be the type of normal person who has millions of dollars to fuel any type of viable political campaign.

Shawn Johnson:
Zac, a couple of questions for you. One, this seems kind of unprecedented to me as I scan back through political campaigns that I’ve covered in Wisconsin. Is that your read of it? And either way, why is it happening now?

Zac Schultz:
It’s definitely unprecedented in terms of a statewide fall election. I think the closest example we could possibly come up with would be some of the Supreme Court elections, where those candidates typically don’t raise a lot of money. And so when Janet Protasiewicz or Susan Crawford got large transfers through the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, they did fuel three-quarters or more of their campaign. But that’s a completely different animal. Those are independent elections. This, as a partisan fall election, is completely unprecedented for the amount of support coming from just a few billionaires, basically fueling the entire Republican campaign. Because it’s not just Tom Tiffany pretty much all of the money going into the Senate races and the Assembly races is coming from these same three donors. They are the ones fueling all of the Republican margins that exist. Some of this, in the disparity, is the Democratic fundraising has fallen off. Nationally, there are a lot more targets for national donors to give to. They may think Wisconsin has it in the bag. They don’t have to worry as much. Or it simply we saw a transfer of the leadership at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Ben Wikler was known for raising money hand over fist. He did a great job of doing that for a lot of years. He is no longer there and the money isn’t flowing into Wisconsin. It also has a lot to do with who is the leader, the name on top of the team. If Tony Evers was running for a third term, he would have a lot more money coming in

Shawn Johnson:

He would, yes.

Zac Schultz:

And incumbents have that amazing power, and he was a great fundraiser. David Crowley was not the favorite to win this primary at any point up until about 8:45 on election night. So yeah, it makes sense that the money didn’t follow him, and it took a while for donors to catch up, and he’s behind. The problem for him is he’s now been labeled and identified and his numbers are going negative. All these things we’re talking about all collide directly together and paint the same picture. And outside of the national environment for Democrats, this is all negative news for Republicans. Ordinarily, this should be a Republican walkaway. You could argue the only reason that Tom Tiffany is this close is the amount of money he’s had, because his history he’s not known for being a prolific fundraiser, and you could argue he’s still not, because this is all money just being transferred directly to him by three people.

Shawn Johnson:
So let’s look at some numbers that I guess are more favorable to David Crowley, less favorable to Tom Tiffany, and those are favorability of President Donald Trump by party. His favorability, or his approval rating, hit a record low in this poll 60% disapprove of the president compared to 38% who approve. If you break that down by party: Democrats, surprisingly, unsurprisingly, do not like the president 1% approve. Kind of interesting as you get into independents there 14% approve, 81% disapprove. That’s very high for independents. And then even among Republicans, that is the number that struck me the most 78% approve, 20% disapprove. We’re so used to Republicans, Rich, kind of being in the president’s corner. Is this a sign that some of them are leaving him?

Rich Kremer:
Well, it could be that. It could be a sign that those who never really were super fans of President Trump are maybe more resolved in their feelings about that. But it’s definitely not a good picture for Republicans. But then again, what I remember hearing from political consultants or political science people, is that races for governor are different than, say, races for Congress, where they were saying that what’s going on at the national level doesn’t always translate directly to the state. And it sure seems like that’s what’s going on here. Even Charles Franklin warned against trying to translate Trump’s favorability ratings at the national level, or even in Wisconsin, to this race, because he said there are examples from other states where we have governor’s races or Senate races that are a lot closer than you’d expect. He said, if it was just about what’s at the national level, Democrats would be walking away with a 20-point lead, and they’re just not.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, I mean I did hear Charles did say that you can’t just look at national numbers and transplant that over to state races. But in my recollection, when there are big wave years, you can do just that. I remember every year that I’ve covered a wave election, there have been then, the party that’s on the losing side kind of says: Look, we got the best candidates, we got the best message, these are local races. And then the wave crashes. So, I mean, Anya, what’s the are these local races? Are these state races? Do they get caught up in the wave, or should we take Charles’s grains of salt there?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I feel like I want to say yes to every part of that question

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah, right? Yes and yes.

Anya van Wagtendonk:

They are local. They are statewide

Shawn Johnson:

Yes and yes.

Anya van Wagtendonk:

They are national. And I think it’s up to the candidates again, especially the Democrats who want to leverage Trump’s historic unpopularity to really strongly draw that connection. I’m actually kind of surprised that I don’t see more of that explicit connection being drawn, because I think that is one of the sort of best weapons that they have, is that unpopularity. So how do they tie that to Tom Tiffany in their own favor?

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, Zac, they could literally, it seems like they could literally hit that message in every single ad if they really wanted to.

Zac Schultz:
If they had the money to run more ads

Shawn Johnson:

That’s right.

Zac Schultz:

I’m sure that’s what they’re doing, and that’s how these all tie together. If you don’t have the money to get your message home, the voters don’t hear it.

Shawn Johnson:
There you go, it’s all connected this week for sure. That’s all the time we’ve got for today. We do want to let you know we’ve got a couple free live events coming up around the state ahead of the election. Join all four of us for an evening in Eau Claire on Tuesday, Oct. 20, or Madison on Tuesday, Oct. 27. We’ll talk about the show, what we’re seeing in our reporting as Election Day nears, and take your questions. Find the details at pbswisconsin.org/events and reserve your spot. This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. Be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org, wpr.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.