Charles Franklin on His Final 2024 Poll of Wisconsin Voters

Frederica Freyberg:
As so often befalls Wisconsin, this election is a squeaker virtually tied at the top of the ticket heading into November 5th. We turn to Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll out this week with his last poll before Election Day and thanks for being here.

Charles Franklin:
Glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
So let’s take a look right away at your results. A Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is supported by 50% of likely voters and a Republican former President Donald Trump is supported by 49% in the head-to-head. How has this tightened since your last poll?

Charles Franklin:
It’s tightened a little bit from a four-point Harris lead in late September to this one-point lead, but over the course of the year, we’ve done seven polls. Not one of them has been outside the margin of error. This one is no exception to that.

Frederica Freyberg:
Are there any trends to point to that suggest a winner here?

Charles Franklin:
Yeah, not really because they’re pushing in different directions. On issues, Trump has a little bit of an advantage. 46% say he’s better on the issue that’s most important to them. 43% say the same of Harris. But on personal characteristics, Harris is seen as, by a considerable margin, having the right temperament to be president, being honest and being intelligent. Trump has an advantage on having a record of past accomplishments So, on the balance, the personality side is leaning strongly to Harris. But on the issue side, it leans to Trump. And then the last thing is that Joe Biden remains unpopular, just 42 or 43% job approval all this past year. And people think their financial situation is worse off than it was under Trump.

Frederica Freyberg:
In this latest poll, you surveyed 5% more Republicans than Democrats. Does that change the result or get weighted somehow?

Charles Franklin:
No. We’ve seen over the course of the year, we’ve seen Republican advantages of 3 to 5%, and it’s been about 4% the last couple of polls. This final poll was a 4% in late September. It’s a 5% now. This may reflect a genuine shift in partisanship because we’ve seen it all year. It was a little bit tighter a year ago in November of 2023, but throughout this year, we’ve seen this little bit larger than in the past Republican advantage. So we’ll find out on Election Day if that squares with the vote. But it’s not an aberration of a single poll. It’s been a consistent pattern throughout the year.

Frederica Freyberg:
There’s so many things to talk about here, but one of them is the 5% undecided. I can’t believe there’s anybody undecided.

Charles Franklin:
You’d think that especially this late in the game. But when you look at who is undecided, it actually makes sense. Independents, pure independents who don’t feel closer to either party, about 20% undecided. People who dislike both candidates, 35 to 40% undecided and Republicans with an unfavorable view of Trump, that’s 13% of Republicans, about 40% undecided. The crossover of Republicans voting for Harris is about 7%. So that’s a little bit more than half of the Republicans with an unfavorable view of Trump.

Frederica Freyberg:
There’s another number here. Third party candidates combined take 9% in your poll. Now it’s not expected that that would stand during actual voting but could that tip this race?

Charles Franklin:
Well it certainly could and it’s the biggest surprise to me in the poll. We’ve been seeing third party voting going down all year. It was 6% at the end of September. Now it’s 9%. I think, in part, it still reflects some reluctance on the part of voters who are not thrilled with either choice. But I’d be surprised if it’s that high. We were at 5.5% in 2016, and just 1.5% third party vote in 2020. So I’ve been expecting that to be below 5.5 but this last poll showed a little uptick for Kennedy and a tiny uptick for the other third-party candidates.

Frederica Freyberg:
Let’s get to the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin. Your results show that Tammy Baldwin is at 51% to 49% for Eric Hovde. Now, this is inside the margin of error. This is quite a tightening since your last poll.

Charles Franklin:
It is. We were at Baldwin ahead by 6 or 7 in the last poll. So down to two now. Other polling has shown it a close race and the campaigns have said they think their polling shows it close. So I think the 2% is probably reasonable given what’s happened in other people’s polls. And there has been some shifts in the perception of Hovde in particular.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what are her headwinds in this race?

Charles Franklin:
Well, what we’ve seen is we’ve asked people which candidate would work harder to solve national problems. Baldwin had been leading in this, but this time Hovde is one point ahead of her on that question. So it suggests some messaging has sunk in. Also, who would better represent the interests of Wisconsin? Baldwin had had a nine-point lead earlier on that. It’s down to about a four-point lead now. I think in some sense this is just the tightening of the race, but it also does reflect some of the messages of each campaign beginning to work through.

Frederica Freyberg:
Still people really want to vote. And the measure of enthusiasm, it’s at 66%, but it’s varied by party. For Democrats, 75% are very enthusiastic, and that is up 4% from your last poll. How historically high is that or is it?

Charles Franklin:
It’s quite high. It’s not historically high levels, but it is quite high. Earlier in the year, Republicans were 10 to 15 points more enthusiastic than Democrats then Biden dropped out and Democrats caught up and then surpassed Republicans. Republican enthusiasm is still pretty high. It’s just that Democrats have pushed a little bit past them.

Frederica Freyberg:
So Republican enthusiasm sits at 66%. One thing I really want to get to is to ask you on election night, as the returns come in, what in Wisconsin will you be watching for?

Charles Franklin:
It’s always the margin of the vote coming in in Milwaukee and in Dane County. That’s where Democrats run up their huge margins in those two counties. The WOW Counties around Milwaukee, do those show a further decline in Republican strength? We expect the Republican to win, but maybe by less. And then I think the sleeper is what happens in the north and west of the state. Trump gained a lot of votes from ’12 to ’16, but in ’20, he basically broke even with where he had been in 2016. But there’s potential for a surge in Trump votes there. If that happens, that’s good news for him. If it fails to happen, then we’re looking at the southeast to see if these trends that we’ve seen in the Milwaukee suburbs and in Milwaukee and Dane County hold up.

Frederica Freyberg:
Perfect. Thank you.

Charles Franklin:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
Charles Franklin.