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Well, 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 Turvey Democratic Primary
for Governor, some insights from this week's Market Law School poll. Even though it was
in the field before Lieutenant Governor Sarah 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 road 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 race. And of course, we didn't
have David Crowley because he was not a candidate at that moment. The other thing that's really
important is that 45 percent 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 hadn't settled on who they would 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 Evers is remarkably
popular among Democrats. He has an 89 percent 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 going to 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 votes?
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 Calderon.
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 were in that undecided category
and make them just throw up their hands and say I'm not going to 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's lead goes up to five and Hong then ties Tiffany. So I think my take away 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.
Yeah. 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'll still have two more weeks to election day when this poll is finished.
Well thank you for your work. Thank you.
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