Here & Now

Inside Wisconsin Politics: Marquette Polls 2026 Democrats

Frederica Freyberg:
For more insights on the twists and turns we look to this week’s “Inside Wisconsin Politics.” In this excerpt, we hear from our own Zac Schultz and WPR’s Shawn Johnson.

Shawn Johnson:
Of the Democrats in the race right now, not including David Crowley, only Mandela Barnes defeats Tom Tiffany in a head-to-head matchup by a 44 to 40% split among registered voters. Tiffany leads Francesca Hong 43 to 40%, so a plus four for Mandela Barnes, minus three for Francesca Hong. Zac, I mean, I think it kind of begs the question, why did the establishment not rally around Mandela Barnes?

Zac Schultz:
One of the distinctions is Barnes came in with the most name recognition of everyone due to his 2022 U.S. Senate run, his close loss to Ron Johnson. And it was always a question because he also had the highest negatives that came with that hangover from that election. And he started running this race as the front runner. He introduced himself as saying, “I’m the one to take on Tom Tiffany.” He did the thing where he ignores the rest of the field and kind of pretends they weren’t there. And then partway through this election, I think he or his campaign realized, “Oh no, Francesca Hong is there. I do have to take her seriously.” So he kind of had to shift his tone to talking about his competitors, where I think at first, he was running the 2022 U.S. Senate primary, where all of his competitors dropped out at the end, and he basically had the field to himself. That didn’t happen. So it is a question of, did the rest of the field say you’ve had your chance and you couldn’t make your case? Now we’re going to go with someone else, or is it simply that they think her negatives are too high, despite the head-to-head matchup looking good.

Shawn Johnson:
Why are so many people not sure about this? What we thought was going to be a very high-profile race for governor.

Zac Schultz:
Because those 48% make up a lot of people who don’t watch this podcast, so they are not as informed. There are a lot of people who don’t pay attention to politics until the very end. They’re — I just got the first campaign flier in my mailbox this morning. They’re starting to come. Those people will follow along. Another thing that happens in primaries pretty regularly is people wait to see if there is a frontrunner. They don’t like to waste their vote on someone who will not win, or they’re going to say, “Well, I like this person, but they’re in fourth place and they’re not polling very high. Why would I throw it behind them? Who is my next favorite?” Which is another good thing that the Marquette poll does is they do who is your next favorite in line? Another thing to look at is Tom Tiffany is unopposed in the Republican primary. There’s still 30% undecided there.

Shawn Johnson:
That’s quite a finding.

Zac Schultz:
They’re going to vote for the Republican but I think you can take that 30%, put it over and compare it to the 48% for the Democrats and go, okay, there’s just a lot of people that either aren’t tuned in yet, or they’re waiting to the last minute to figure out who is actually the frontrunner. Who do I trust to be the candidate for my favorite party?