Here & Now

Voters Still Deciding on Key 2022 Primaries

Frederica Freyberg:

You wouldn’t know it from listening to the Gableman investigation, but 67% of all registered voters surveyed in Wisconsin are very or somewhat confident the votes were accurately cast and counted in the 2020 election. That’s according to the latest Marquette University Law School poll, which looked at approval ratings, the horse race in the upcoming governor and U.S. Senate elections and issues in the state. Poll Director Charles Franklin joins us now. Thanks for being here, Charles.

Charles Franklin:

Good to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as to who has confidence in the accuracy of the 2020 election, as expected, you see vast partisan splits in that result, right?

Charles Franklin:

There are big differences. Just as sort of a basic way of saying it, it’s been about two thirds of Republicans who were skeptical about the election, but about two thirds of the public at large who were confident in the election. So you have this difficult problem of within the party, a lot of skepticism among Republicans that’s simply not mirrored in the public at large. And so that’s part of the issue with a lot of the conflict within the Republican Party about it right now. We did see a little decline in skepticism among Republicans this month. It had been about 70% last month, or in October, it fell to about 60% this time. So that’s not a lot of movement, but it is a consistent movement and it’s interesting because it goes in the opposite direction from the increased debate in the Capital and in the gubernatorial election.

Frederica Freyberg:

Interesting. Well, meanwhile, looking ahead to the 2022 election and key matchups that we’re watching, your polling shows that in the Republican primary for governor, Republicans and independents who say they will vote in the primary, Rebecca Kleefisch is the choice of 30%, Kevin Nicholson preferred by 8%, Timothy Ramthun is supported by 5% and then 54% say they don’t know. That 54% says it all at this point, doesn’t it?

Charles Franklin:

I think it really does. And you know, for those of us that pay attention to politics day in and day out, year in and year out, it’s maybe a little surprising. But if you look at past primary races this far out, five months out, it’s not at all surprising to find that half have not picked a candidate in that race, and I really wouldn’t expect that number to get a lot lower until we’re getting close to the beginning of the summer at least. It is clear that Kleefisch has a noticeable advantage in this race. But keep your eye on that 54% and understand that a lot could change between now and August.

Frederica Freyberg:

Lots of candidates are lined up to run in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate against Republican Senator Ron Johnson. Your polling here shows Mandela Barnes is supported by 23%, Alex Lasry 13%, Tom Nelson sits at 5%, and Sarah Godlewski is preferred by 3%. Your polling shows Republican and Democratic primary voters are about equally unsure of their primary preferences, plus name recognition of these candidates on both sides seems low for a state so politically focused and hyper partisan. What about that?

Charles Franklin:

Absolutely. And 48% on the Democratic side said they had not made up their minds. By the way, we did ask about all 11 candidates and no one else got more than 2%. I think that it is true that we are very involved in politics, but an awful lot of our involvement is about Democrat versus Republican, and these within-the-party races with candidates that are not household names is more time-consuming for voters to make up their minds. We saw this in 2018 in the gubernatorial primary for the Democrats that Tony Evers eventually won. That was also a big field and a lot of candidates struggled to get known. Finally, this election year is likely to be an intense election year by the time we get to the August primary, but it may take us a while for that to wrap up, including getting to know the names of the candidates too.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let’s take a look at the favorability for Senator Ron Johnson, according to your polling, he’s viewed favorably by 33% of voter, and unfavorably by 45%. 21% saying they haven’t heard enough or don’t know. He’s underwater, though, and has trended down.

Charles Franklin:

Yes, and this is his worst net favorability that we’ve seen since 2013. He’s also down a little bit from in October, when he was at 38 favorable — I’m sorry, from October when he was at 36 favorable, 42 unfavorable so a little downward trend. He really peaked recently in 2019 and has been coming down slowly but fairly steadily and now these numbers. I will remind people that he was also deeply underwater in 2015, before coming back to improve those numbers in ’16 and eventually win the 2016 re-election bid. This is informative numbers, but things can change again.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Tony Evers’ job approval is right side up, 50% approve while 41% do not approve. But you know, while Evers’ job approval is right side up as we said, another question you asked had to do with whether Wisconsin is headed in the right direction or on the wrong track, and 39% of voters there said the state is headed in the right direction while 53% said it was on the wrong track. How do the governor’s job approval numbers square with this right track, wrong track result?

Charles Franklin:

Yeah, that’s right. I think the direction of the state is an indicator of some broad pessimism about the state, but it’s also true about the country. Part of that comes from both sides can blame the other party for why we’re headed in the wrong direction, and I think that’s part of why you can see a difference between these two.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Well, Charles Franklin, thank you very much. Really nice to see you again.

Charles Franklin:

Thank you.