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.
Charles, nice to see you.
Good to be here.
So in terms of that first question,
what do you think of whether
November 4 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 has 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 go in into your national polling,
and 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 registered
voters, it's a five-point cap, 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, 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 march
in quite a bit.
Where do independents stand?
Oh, they're very down on the
Republican Party right now.
Now, independents are also pretty
down on the Democratic Party right
now, but independents are leaning
pretty heavily Democratic,
except that a
lot of Democrats say they wouldn't
vote for either party.
That's where they're negative about
both. But the balance between
Republican and Democrats, they're
giving a very heavy margin to
Democrats.
So what is driving this sentiment
among respondents certain
to vote? Is it all about Donald
Trump and how he is governing?
I think it's enormously about
Trump, though Trump's overall job
approval is not much less than
it was recently.
In fact, it's exactly the same as in
our September poll.
But the concern about
inflation and the economy and
the belief that Donald Trump is not
addressing those problems well,
those are things that
hurt the president,
but hurt his party and help
Democrats at this point.
So will some of the moves that the
president has made to undo some
tariffs, for
example, deliver him from being
underwater, do you think?
I think they're an important move to
try to address the grocery
price issue.
For example,
just in the last couple of days,
he's taken off tariffs on Brazil,
on coffee and a variety of other
vegetables and other things that
we import from there.
Whether that will be enough to
change the overall trajectory
of how people see prices going,
that I think is far less
clear. But it is tangible
efforts.
In fairness, to take off tariffs
that he himself imposed that drove
up costs, but to pull those
down.
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 midterm?
I think it could grow.
I think the fact that people have
just begun to see what their
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 gonna 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.
So another issue
out there making major
headlines are these Epstein
documents.
How do you think that will land
politically?
Well, it's been a real problem
for the president and we saw him
backtrack in the last week to
switch to supporting the
release of the documents.
In our poll, you know, it is
well over 70 percent disapprove
of how the president's handled the
Epstein documents.
But we have a lot of uncertainty
about what exactly will be
released, when will it be released
and will it satisfy people that
all of the information is out now.
So it's been an issue
that has dogged the president
ever since the beginning
of this term and the initial
promise to release the documents,
then not to release them now,
to release the documents again.
So I think it's a burden.
Probably the most important thing is
it hurts him within the Republican
party.
It's not surprising that Democrats
don't approve of anything that he
does with the documents.
But within the party there's been a
lot of dissatisfaction with how
he's handled it.
As to Trump's approval rating
in your poll, in this
national poll, he sits at
14 points underwater with
43% approving of his job
performance and 57%
disapproving. But the wow number
really here is that he's
50 points underwater with
independence with 25%
approval and 75%
disapprove. What do you make of
that?
Well, that's a huge, huge problem
politically.
And it's politically a 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
three or four 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, Governor and even the
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 here
that we saw in Virginia.
But Virginia is certainly a
test case to show that
that four, five,
six-point swing, even
in an incumbent district held
by a Republican, is at
risk this year.
All right, Charles Franklin, we'll
leave it there. Thank you very much.
Have a good Thanksgiving.