good economic tradeoffs there that are worth
thanks very much. >> Great. Thank you.
>> What kind of bellwether were elections earlier this
month in other states that saw Republican candidates
on the losing end? And how do recent partisan fights
over affordability of everything from health care
to groceries play into outcomes in midterm
elections? Next year, we turn to Marquette
University Law School poll director Charles Franklin,
out this week with his latest national poll. And
Charles, nice to see you. >> Good to be here.
>> So in terms of that first question, what do you
think of whether November 4th outcomes in other
states are more than just kind of a cyclical swing?
>> I think they show us where the country is right
now, or at least where those states were. It's
true that it's not a surprise that Democrats won
those two states for the governorship. But remember,
Virginia elected a Republican governor four
years ago and is now elected a Democrat by a
large margin. Maybe more important for here in
Wisconsin, Democrats picked up 13 seats in the Virginia
House of delegates, going from 51 seats to 64 seats.
That was a remarkable shift. And the problems we saw
there on inflation, on the economy are the same things
we're seeing in national polling.
>> So going into your national polling in 2026
congressional elections, you found that among likely
voters, 53% of respondents would vote for Democrats,
with 44% voting for Republicans. Does that
result surprise you? >> It's a large result.
That's a nine point gap. That's very substantial.
Interestingly, with five point gap, a little
bit smaller. The difference between those is Democrats
now are more likely to say they're certain they're
going to vote in the fall by about seven points more
likely in this national poll. So you've got both
the preference for Democrats and the
motivation to turn out. And those two things, together
with the likely vote numbers, drives up that
Democratic margin quite a bit.
>> So one result that was the reason for the
government shutdown. In this poll, you found 70% of
respondents favor extending the ACA tax credits. How
big of a driver do you think that issue will be in
the midterms? >> I think it could grow. I
think the fact that people have just begun to see what
they're insurance costs will be under the ACA for
next year. If they're buying insurance on the
marketplace. Also, for the folks that are affected by
those tax credits going away, some of their
increases are quite large. We shouldn't exaggerate how
many people are affected, but it's a significant
number that are. Republicans are really
going to have to deal with this in the Congress, with
or without Democratic agreement. But what are
they doing for their party? And does this issue build
over the fall into the election, or does it kind
of Peter out? We don't know that yet.
rating in your poll, in this national poll, he sits
at 14 points underwater with 43% approving of his
job performance, in 57% disapproving. But the wow
number really here is that he's 50 points underwater
with independents with 25% approval and 75%
disapproval. What do you make of that?
>> Well, that's a huge, huge problem politically
and it's politically problem for the president,
but also for Republicans going into the midterms
because you can't just win on your own party base. You
need to pick up at least a good share of those 14 or
15% of independents in the country. And these are
historically pretty abysmal numbers for any president
with independents at this point. Maybe it'll turn
around. He's still strong with Republicans, 85%
approval with them and 5% with Democrats. But
independents are an important swing vote. And I
think every member of Congress or legislator that
sits in a district that's a close competitive district,
especially, has to know that the independent vote
in those districts could shift their margin 3 or 4
points one way or the other. That could be the
difference between winning and losing.
>> So as to that, transposing these national
poll results to Wisconsin elections, what kind of
warning signs do you see for Republicans in upcoming
races, for Congress, legislature?
>> Yeah, I think that what we saw in Virginia to come
back to a real election, not just a poll, is that we
saw Republican incumbents lose seats in Virginia that
Trump had won by six points last time. So our
competitive states here, sorry, districts,
legislative districts here are within that kind of
margin. Now I'm not for a minute saying that we will
see the same swing here that we saw in Virginia.
But Virginia, certainly a test case to show that that
4 or 5 six point swing, even in an incumbent
district held by a Republican is at risk this