Here & Now

Charles Franklin on Voter Enthusiasm and Top Issues in 2024

Frederica Freyberg:
Enthusiasm for voting in the presidential election is way down from four years ago. That’s a message from the latest Marquette Law School poll out this week. For details we turn to poll director Charles Franklin and thanks very much for being here.

Charles Franklin:
Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
Overall how does enthusiasm to vote for president compare to 2020?

Charles Franklin:
Compared to March of 2020 versus now, early April, it’s down 20 points who say they are very enthusiastic about voting. That’s quite a drop and it was down in our January poll, also about 20 points below where it had been four years ago. Now enthusiasm can change over the course of the year. This is not necessarily baked in but I think certainly at the start of the races, it shows we’re not really eager in looking forward to the fall campaign.

Frederica Freyberg:
Let’s take a look at the presidential matchups in your polling. It is Trump 51% to Biden at 49%. In your last poll, they were even but you also found independent RFK, Jr. got 13% and he was taking votes from Trump. What is this spelling for Biden?

Charles Franklin:
We’ve seen this in several polls now, that Republicans vote for Kennedy about four to five points more than Democrats vote for Kennedy. So it is a little more from the Republican side. Now the Green candidate, Jill Stein and the independent, Cornell West, take more from Democrats than Republicans. This month is basically a very small change. Trump is up two in the head-to-head. He’s up by one point in the five-way race. So the net effect of all this is actually slightly improved Biden’s position but it is a very slight difference. One last thing, Kennedy getting 13%. Remember in 2016, which was the recent high-water mark in Wisconsin, all independent candidates together only got 5.5% of the vote.

Frederica Freyberg:
So 13% is a big number. Taking a look at the Tammy Baldwin – Eric Hovde comparison, among registered voters is Democrat Tammy Baldwin, 52% to 47% for Republican challenger Hovde. How has that moved since Hovde announced?

Charles Franklin:
We didn’t have an earlier vote question because he wasn’t an announced candidate yet. This is our first time of polling that. Hovde has gotten better known since January, when we did ask if you had a favorable or unfavorable view. Then in January, 82% said they didn’t know enough to have an opinion. This time it’s 56%. So a substantial growth in name recognition for him but still more than half the electorate don’t have an opinion. That’s totally normal for nonincumbent candidates at this stage of the race but by comparison 11% said they didn’t have an opinion of Tammy Baldwin.

Frederica Freyberg:
Among likely voters, their numbers are even at 50%. What is the implication of that?

Charles Franklin:
Well, it’s two things. One is that 50/50 tie means this could look like a close race. If people were thinking of Baldwin’s 11 point win six years ago, this looks like a much closer race than what we saw in 2018. The other is that I think Hovde actually benefits in an odd kind of way in that 50/50 split we are saying Democrat Tammy Baldwin or Republican Eric Hovde when half the electorate don’t have an opinion of Hovde supplying the Republican label really helps them decide, oh, this is someone on my team or maybe not on my team. Two other ways of asking the question show a range of answers with Baldwin ahead by as much as seven or five as we just emphasized on the registered voter or tied. So it is a range of things. I think a close race is the best answer to take away from it.

Frederica Freyberg:
Looking kind of deeper into the enthusiasm part of your polling specific to presidential candidates, it seems lopsided. Forty-one percent of Biden voters are very enthusiastic to vote compared to 59% of Trump voters. Then for not at all enthusiastic to vote, 62% say that for Joe Biden, 37% for Donald Trump.

Charles Franklin:
I think this is really the look of the race, that Trump has a very supportive, very enthusiastic group behind him. Biden voters are just simply maybe Biden voters. They are certainly mostly not Trump voters but they’re not really excited about the race or enthusiastic. They, like the country, have reservations about Biden’s age. There’s a division within the party about handling Israel and Hamas and all of those things are making Biden supporters unenthusiastic even if they are still pretty committed to voting for him. And can you mobilize those unenthusiastic supporters?

Frederica Freyberg:
Let’s take a look at issues that you polled on. The top three issues were the economy, immigration and abortion. It seems of note that the issue of Israel and Gaza was way down the list at 2%.

Charles Franklin:
Way down at 2% and among people 18 to 29, it was 7% that said Israel and Gaza was the most important problem. I think this is just a good example that individual groups and particular issues can mobilize a lot of people who have really strong opinions. That doesn’t mean it’s the most important issue on the country as a whole or even among young voters and it is less than 7% among Democrats and people who consider themselves very liberal. The other thing on this issue is that Democrats put abortion as the first issue but immigration only gets 1% as the most important issue for Democrats. It and the economy are by far the top two issues for Republicans.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right, Charles Franklin, thanks very much.

Charles Franklin:
Thank you.