Less than a week before the election, director of the Marquette Law School poll Charles Franklin breaks down the most recent numbers. He says that partisans a breaking strongly for their respective candidates, at a rate upwards of 90 percent. He also describes a turnout trend, where higher turnout may favor Republicans in 2018, as it would close the enthusiasm gap that currently favors Democrats.
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Where Do the Numbers Stand with Days to Go?
Frederica Freyberg: What to make of numbers in the final statewide poll before next Tuesday, election day. Director of the Marquette University Law School Poll, Charles Franklin, is here to sort it out. Thanks very much for being here.
Charles Franklin: Good to be here.
Frederica Freyberg: So let’s do a quick run through the numbers. The race for governor is a tie. For U.S. Senate Tammy Baldwin is up over Leah Vukmir by 11. The race for state attorney general has Brad Schimel up by two, obviously within that margin of error. But now Tony Evers is up seven points with Independents in your poll. How big of a deal is that?
Charles Franklin: Independents are holding the balance of power in this election really. We’re seeing that partisans are up well into the 90% range supporting their own party. There’s a little bit of crossover but it’s tiny. And so the balance then lies with Independents. And we’ve seen them favor Evers by 20 points back in September when we had a five-point Evers lead. Then they dropped to seven early this month. And Walker had a one-point lead. And now they’re still favoring Evers by seven, and it’s a dead heat, 47-47 tie.
Frederica Freyberg: Independents also favor Tammy Baldwin.
Charles Franklin: By even more, by 22. That’s why Baldwin — one of the reasons why Baldwin’s lead over Vukmir is so much larger compared to the tie in the governor’s race. It’s not only Independents, but it’s substantially from them.
Frederica Freyberg: As for voting groups as you call them, Evers has strongest support from white, female, college graduates and people of color while Walker does best with white, male, noncollege voters. What are the implications of this?
Charles Franklin: This is the divide that we’ve been seeing growing that combines the gender gap, which has been with us for a while, with this newly-emerging education gap between the college graduates and the noncollege graduates. And you see it most clearly among whites, is the reason we split it out there. But when you reinforce noncollege with men, or college and women, you get this very large gap with both groups splitting heavily but in opposite directions. It then actually leads, in addition to Independents, the balance of power, again, with noncollege women and college men. And right now the men are on balance going for Walker. The women, regardless of education, for Evers. But that could shift. That’s one of the things that we’ll be watching for on election night.
Frederica Freyberg: How does Trump play into that?
Charles Franklin: Trump plays in by really reinforcing partisanship right now. In September, Republicans gave him here in the state an 81% approval rating. Pretty good, but a little low compared to what it had been. Today or this week, it’s 92% approval among Republicans. So his rally, his campaigning more generally seems to really be cementing his hold on Republicans. But Independents are 41 approve, 55 disapprove, a net minus 14 for Trump. So the strategy that’s working for his base voters is not seemingly improving his standing with Independents.
Frederica Freyberg: In terms of voter enthusiasm, overall 70% of voters are very enthusiastic to go out and cast a ballot. Dems have the edge on that. But you say “Evers’ percentage of vote goes up when turnout is lower.” How so?
Charles Franklin: This is confusing to people because normally Democrats benefit from bigger turnouts. But it’s because of the enthusiasm and the turnout advantage that Dems are enjoying now and have enjoyed in special elections this year. So that if you raised overall turnout, what you’d actually be doing is bringing some marginal Republican voters, who are currently not quite likely to vote or very enthusiastic, you might boost them into the electorate and doing that would actually lower the Democratic advantage. But I should say across several different turnout scenarios from pretty low to pretty high, all of our results are inside the margin of error. These are very small differences, but it’s driven by that fact that Democrats are more enthusiastic this year.
Frederica Freyberg: What’s the most important part of the state to watch?
Charles Franklin: I actually think it’s probably the north west, the Wausau, Eau Claire, Minneapolis, St. Paul area. That’s an area that went heavily for Trump and which — a lot of those counties flipped from Obama to Trump. In the Supreme Court race this spring, we saw the liberal candidate do well in some of those areas. So was that a harbinger to this time? We are seeing Republicans doing less well there in the polling, but wait for election night. Polls have been wrong before. And so let’s just leave it in the hands of the voters now to settle this matter. But keep an eye out on Wausau.
Frederica Freyberg: Okay. Charles Franklin, thanks very much for your work.
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