Here & Now

Charles Franklin on Polling Wisconsin's Temperature in 2023

Frederica Freyberg:

With election 2024 already heating up, the latest statewide polling on candidates, sitting politicians and issues takes the public temperature in Wisconsin. The new Marquette University Law School poll finds some interesting results. Here to talk about it, Poll Director Charles Franklin. Thanks for being here.

Charles Franklin:

Good to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tony Evers’ approval rating jump is interesting.

Charles Franklin:

It’s quite a jump.

Frederica Freyberg:

Your survey found that 57% of respondents approve of the job he’s doing while 39% disapprove and his approval rating has gone up 11 points since just before the last election. What in your mind explains this?

Charles Franklin:

I think there are two things. One is just before the election, you’re in the heat of an electoral battle so that tends to push down the approval numbers but then, he won that race by over 3 percentage points and I think during the spring, he’s had a pretty good legislative session. He certainly hasn’t gotten most of what he wanted but he’s gotten a fair bit of what he wanted. So I think the spring has been fairly good. It’s also striking that he’s the one person that’s really had this substantial rise in approval since October. Other rises are much more modest. So I do think we have to give some credit to him.

Frederica Freyberg:

On the other hand, your poll shows that 57% think the state is on the wrong track, 40% saying it’s going in the right direction, but could that be something other than Tony Evers?

Charles Franklin:

I think what we’re really seeing is that used to be a measure of how good a job the incumbent’s doing, but now if you’re a Democrat, you blame Republicans for why we’re headed off in the wrong direction. If you’re a Republican, you blame the Democrats for the same thing. There’s a lot of across the aisle pointing. We see that in the national numbers as well as the state numbers. We keep asking the question but it really doesn’t seem to mean what it used to mean about whether things are good or bad.

Frederica Freyberg:

Interesting. So in the GOP presidential primary, among Republicans and those who lean Republican when accounting for all of the GOP candidates out there, it’s even between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, 31% to 30% but with 21% undecided, that seems like a big number. When you asked who they would pick if it were only between those two, 57% chose DeSantis over 41% for Trump. What do all these numbers say?

Charles Franklin:

Well, first of all, it’s really surprising because in national polling Trump is leading DeSantis by at least double digits and that’s been pretty consistent including in our national polling. I was surprised by that number. But what we see is that of the people that would like somebody other than DeSantis or Trump or are undecided, they go 65 to 75% to DeSantis when you ask the head-to-head question. Only about a quarter of them move to Trump. Trump is getting a lot of support from his base within the party but of the 30% of Republicans that don’t like Trump, he got 0% on the head-to-head question. So it’s not, you know, those that like him still like him quite a bit but there is this segment, a minority of 30%, that really don’t like Trump and are looking for any alternative.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as for either of the two frontrunning Republican primary candidates for president, your poll showed a close match-up between Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis. 49% for Biden, 47% for DeSantis with 4% undecided. In the hypothetical match-up between Biden, he does much better against Trump, 52% to 43%. So as a candidate, Donald Trump has some work to do in this important swing state.

Charles Franklin:

Yes, I think that is certainly the case and it goes partly to the electability argument. It also goes to the fact that Trump is still getting 94 and 95% of the Republican vote when he’s matched up against Biden. DeSantis gets almost exactly the same Republican support there. So it’s not Republicans deserting Trump at all. What it is is the independents who lean a little bit to Biden versus DeSantis but move heavily to Biden when it’s Trump as the alternative. What we’re seeing is the difficulty of winning your primary with a lot of true believers but then moving on to a general election and you need to appeal to independents. And at least this month in this sample, Trump is doing noticeably worse with independents than DeSantis is. Remember, we are in the field the day and following the indictment of Trump. Didn’t hurt him with Republicans but it may be that that’s part of what’s going on with these independents and looking ahead to the general.

Frederica Freyberg:

Interesting context. So as for sitting U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, also up for re-election, her favorability rating ticked up 3 points from last October, now sitting at 40% favorable, 37% unfavorable but 22% have not heard enough about her. She must still be formidable though because nobody has jumped out to formally declare against her.

Charles Franklin:

That’s right and that 22% is sort of in line with where she has been for the last two or three years. Ron Johnson is usually in the 30s. Though when elections come, you get that number down to maybe 10% that say they don’t know enough. It’s a big election effect. When we asked about four potential Republican challengers between 50 and 85% didn’t know enough about any of those. And that just shows until somebody officially gets in and the race starts to heat up and they’re campaigning, no challenger is going to look very good on the name recognition side and in perspective Baldwin has a little advantage of being well known but the challengers when they do get in will build recognition over the next 18 months.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right, Charles Franklin, thanks very much for your work.

Charles Franklin:

Thank you.