While the State Department of
Justice will investigate the
shooting, the Dane County DA will
make any charging decisions.
The Madison Office of the
Independent Police Monitor will
also investigate.
Turning to election news in the
topsy-turvy Democratic primary
for governor, some insights from
this week's Marquette Law School
poll. Even though it was in the
field before Lieutenant Governor
Sara Rodriguez dropped out
and Milwaukee County Executive David
Crowley got back into the race.
Poll Director Charles Franklin is
here with more, and thanks for being
here.
Thanks for having me.
So even in the midst of this
upheaval, what are your takeaways
from your latest poll?
I think the biggest thing is that
even with Rodriguez in the race
in our poll,
Francesca Hong was still in first
place. That's the fourth poll in
a row that she's led.
Mandela Barnes was in second place,
also the third poll that
he's been in second place since he
got in the raise.
And of course we didn't have David
Crowley because he was not a
candidate at that moment.
Um The other
thing that's really important is
that 45% of Democratic
primary voters said they hadn't
decided who they would vote for.
So even before the turmoil
of changing candidates,
still almost half of the
Democratic electorate said they
haven't settled on who they support.
So Hong supporters are
really strong supporters.
They are quite strong.
They're a little more likely to say
they're absolutely certain that
that's who they're going to vote
for.
And when we ask for second
choices, she doesn't
get that many second choices
which suggests in one sense that
her supporters are already behind
her. But it also suggests
that folks that are looking at
candidates other than her
are not as likely to come to
her if their first choice goes
away.
If two-thirds of Democratic
voters say winning in November is
extremely important, as according
to your poll, how does Tony Evers'
endorsement of David Crowley factor
into that?
The importance of winning
in November was uniform, no matter
which candidate you were supporting,
all of them gave that high
rating to say it was extremely
important.
But Avers is remarkably
popular among Democrats.
He has an 89%
job approval with Democrats right
now.
The question is whether his
endorsements and activity
in the campaign moves people
on that decision.
As opposed to they like the job he's
doing as governor, but maybe they're
not gonna be influenced by his
recommendations.
That we really don't know at this
point.
So the Rodriguez lane was
moderate Democrat.
Who picks up most of her vote?
When we asked second choices
of people that supported her,
about an equal number went to
Mandela Barnes and went to
Joel Brennan.
Smaller percentage, a good
bit smaller went to Hong and
a small percentage went to
Calderoy's.
So you described the
undecideds at 45
percent.
Would voters sit this one
out and not vote because of
all of this confusion?
It's possible.
We do still see a
high professed
intention to vote.
It certainly won't be the level of
a midterm election because primaries
are much smaller than that.
But I think the
Democratic coalition is pretty well
mobilized. The issue is
does this turmoil in
the list of candidates
take some people who are in that
undecided category and
make them just throw up their hands
and say I'm not gonna bother.
Or, and this is, I think, a real
possibility, it's
focusing attention on a race that
had been pretty low-key up until
now.
And so it may have the
effect of actually energizing
Democratic voters.
But we're also seeing a significant
split
across especially Hong,
Barnes, and Crowley, potentially
Crowley supporters,
about how does that split the vote?
And does it coalesce around one
candidate?
Or does it just splinter the vote
evenly?
So even with Hong continuing
to lead among Dems, your numbers
show Barnes leads Tiffany
while the rest of the field does
not.
That's right.
When we ask the general election
question, Barnes is the strongest
Democrat, leading Tiffany by
four percentage points,
whereas Hong trails Tiffany by
three points.
When we shift it to likely voters,
the people who say they're certain
they'll vote in the fall, Barnes'
lead goes up to five, and
Hong then ties Tiffany.
So I think my takeaway from this
is that there is a little bit
of a differentiation between the
candidates.
But it's a fairly close race,
whether it's Barnes or Hong or any
of the other Democrats that we asked
about.
So guess what?
It looks like another probably close
election in Wisconsin.
Does the shake-up at the top of the
ticket inform the legislative races?
And maybe we
asked about who would you vote for
for the legislature and Democrats
had a small lead there about a four
point lead.
But that's about just general
voting. We don't ask about
individual races there.
I do think that for
Democrats chances in the fall.
They certainly would benefit from
a strong gubernatorial
candidate and a winning
Democratic campaign because
that support at the governor's level
can trickle down to
the legislative races,
I think it's way too early to
have any sense about whether
whoever the nominee is
will emerge as a very
strong candidate or not.
So meanwhile, you're in the field
again with a new poll
to share with us next Wednesday.
Things keep changing, so you have to
keep doing new polls.
This poll that will come out next
Wednesday is only
about Democratic primary voters,
only about them, and we'll
certainly ask about
opinions of Crowley,
vote again in the primary,
and also Governor Evers' endorsement
and whether people think that makes
them more or less likely to support
David Crowley.
We will also be re-interviewing
the people we've interviewed this
past week, so we'll be able
to see whether those undecided
folks last week have
moved any further towards decision
making this week.
The only drawback to this is it's a
fairly short period of time, so
we will still have two more
weeks to election day when
this poll is finished.
Well, thank you for your work.
Thank you.
Yeah. And lots of links.