You
That's quite a drop and it was down in our January poll also about 20 points below where
it had been four years ago.
Now enthusiasm can change over the course of the year.
This is not necessarily baked in, but I think certainly at the start of the race is it shows
that we're not really eager in looking forward to the fall campaign.
Let's take a look at the presidential match-ups in your polling.
It is Trump 51% to Biden at 49%.
Now in your last poll, they were even.
But you also found that independent RFK Jr. got 13% and that he was taking votes from Trump.
So what is this spelling for Biden?
Yeah, we've seen this in several polls now that Republicans vote for Kennedy about four
to five points more than Democrats vote for Kennedy.
So it is a little more from the Republican side.
Now the green candidate, Jill Stein and the independent Cornell West take more from Democrats
than Republicans.
This month, it's basically a very small change.
Trump is up to in the head to head.
He's up by one point in the five-way race.
So the net effect of all of this is actually a slightly improved Biden's position.
But it's a very slight difference.
One last thing, Kennedy getting 13%.
Remember in 2016, which was the recent high watermark in Wisconsin, all independent candidates
together only got five and a half percent of the vote.
Well, so 13% is a big number.
Taking a look at the Tammy Baldwin-era-Covde comparison, among registered voters, as Democrat
Tammy Baldwin, 52% to 47% for Republican challenger Hovde.
How has that moved since Hovde in out?
Well, we didn't have an earlier vote question because he wasn't in an ounce candidate yet.
So this is our first time of polling that.
Hovde has gotten better known since January, when we did ask if you had a favorable or
unfavorable view, then in January, 82% said they didn't know enough to have an opinion.
This time it's 56%, so a substantial growth and name recognition for him, but still more
than half the electorate don't have an opinion.
That's totally normal for non-incumbent candidates at this stage of the race.
But by comparison, 11% said they didn't have an opinion of Tammy Baldwin.
So among likely voters, their numbers are even at 50%.
What's the implication of that?
Well, it's two things.
One is that 50-50 tie means this could look like a close race.
If people were thinking of Baldwin's 11-point win six years ago, this looks like a much
closer race than what we saw in 2018.
The other is that I think Hovde actually benefits in an odd kind of way.
In that 50-50 split, we're saying Democrat Tammy Baldwin or Republican Eric Hovde, when
half the electorate don't have an opinion of Hovde, supplying the Republican label really
helps them decide, oh, this is someone on my team or maybe not on my team.
Two other ways of asking the question show a range of answers with Baldwin ahead by as
much as seven or five as we just emphasized on the registered voter or tied.
So it's a range of things and I think a close race is the best answer to take away from
it.
So looking kind of deeper into the enthusiasm part of your polling specific to presidential
candidates, it seems lopsided.
41% of Biden voters are very enthusiastic to vote compared to 59% of Trump voters and
then for now that all enthusiastic to vote, 62% say that for Joe Biden, 37% for Donald
Trump.
I think this is really the look of the race that Trump has a very supportive, very enthusiastic
group behind him and Biden voters are just simply, maybe Biden voters, they're certainly
mostly not Trump voters, but they're not really excited about the race or enthusiastic.
They, like the country is all, have reservations about Biden's age.
There's a division within the party about handling Israel and Hamas.
And all of those things are making Biden supporters unenthusiastic, even if they're
still pretty committed to voting for him.
And can you mobilize those unenthusiastic supporters?
Let's take a look at issues that you've pulled on.
The top three issues were the economy, immigration, and abortion.
It seems of note that the issue of Israel and Gaza was way down the list at 2%.
Way down at 2% and among people 18 to 29, it was 7% that said Israel and Gaza was the
most important problem.
I think this is just a good example that individual groups in particular issues can mobilize a
lot of people who have really strong opinions.
That doesn't mean it's the most important issue on the country as a whole or even among
young voters, and it's less than 7% among Democrats and people who consider themselves
very liberal.
The other thing on this issues is that Democrats put abortion as the first issue, but immigration
only gets 1% as the most important issue for Democrats, it and the economy are by far the
top two issues for Republicans.
Right, Al.
All right.
Charles Franklin, thanks very much.
Thank you.