WEBVTT

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You

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Well, the State Department of Justice will investigate the shooting. The Dane County

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DA will make any charging decisions. The Madison Office of the Independent Police Monitor

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will also investigate. Turning to election news in the Topsy Turvey Democratic Primary

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for Governor, some insights from this week's Market Law School poll. Even though it was

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in the field before Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez dropped out and Milwaukee County

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Executive David Crowley got back into the race. Poll Director Charles Franklin is here

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with more and thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So even in the midst of this

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upheaval, what are your takeaways from your latest poll? I think the biggest thing is

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that even with Rodriguez in the race in our poll, Francesca Hong was still in first place.

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That's the fourth poll in a road that she's led. Mandela Barnes was in second place. Also,

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the third poll that he's been in second place since he got in the race. And of course, we didn't

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have David Crowley because he was not a candidate at that moment. The other thing that's really

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important is that 45 percent of Democratic primary voters said they hadn't decided who they would

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vote for. So even before the turmoil of changing candidates, still almost half of the Democratic

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electorate said they hadn't settled on who they would support. So Hong supporters are really

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strong supporters. They are quite strong. They're a little more likely to say they're absolutely

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certain that that's who they're going to vote for. And when we ask for second choices,

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she doesn't get that many second choices, which suggests in one sense that her supporters are

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already behind her. But it also suggests that folks that are looking at candidates other than her

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are not as likely to come to her if their first choice goes away.

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If two thirds of Democratic voters say winning in November is extremely important,

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as according to your poll, how does Tony Evers endorsement of David Crowley factor into that?

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The importance of winning in November was uniform no matter which candidate you were supporting.

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All of them gave that high rating to say it was extremely important. But Evers is remarkably

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popular among Democrats. He has an 89 percent job approval with Democrats right now. The question is

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whether his endorsements and activity in the campaign moves people on that decision as

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opposed to they like the job he's doing as governor, but maybe they're not going to be

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influenced by his recommendations. That we really don't know at this point.

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So the Rodriguez Lane was moderate Democrat. Who picks up most of her votes?

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When we asked second choices of people that supported her about an equal number went to

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Mandela Barnes and went to Joel Brennan. Smaller percentage, a good bit smaller,

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went to Hong and a small percentage went to Calderon.

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So you described the undecideds at 45 percent. Would voters sit this one out and not vote because

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of all of this confusion? It's possible. We do still see a high professed intention to vote.

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It certainly won't be the level of a midterm election because primaries are much smaller than

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that. But I think the Democratic coalition is pretty well mobilized. The issue is does this

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turmoil in the list of candidates take some people who were in that undecided category

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and make them just throw up their hands and say I'm not going to bother.

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Or, and this is I think a real possibility, it's focusing attention on a race that had been pretty

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low key up until now. And so it may have the effect of actually energizing Democratic voters.

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But we're also seeing a significant split across especially Hong Barnes and Crowley,

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potentially Crowley supporters, about how does that split the vote and does it coalesce around

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one candidate or does it just splinter the vote evenly? So even with Hong continuing to lead among

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Dems, your numbers show Barnes leads Tiffany while the rest of the field does not.

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That's right. When we ask the general election question, Barnes is the strongest Democrat

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leading Tiffany by four percentage points. Whereas Hong trails Tiffany by three points.

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When we shift it to likely voters, the people who say they're certain they'll vote in the fall,

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Barnes's lead goes up to five and Hong then ties Tiffany. So I think my take away from this

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is that there is a little bit of a differentiation between the candidates, but it's a fairly close

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race whether it's Barnes or Hong or any of the other Democrats that we asked about.

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So guess what? It looks like another probably close election in Wisconsin.

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Yeah. Does the shake up at the top of the ticket inform the legislative races?

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And maybe we asked about who would you vote for for the legislature and Democrats had a small

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lead there, about a four point lead, but that's about just general voting. We don't ask about

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individual races there. I do think that for Democrats chances in the fall, they certainly

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would benefit from a strong gubernatorial candidate and a winning Democratic campaign

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because that support at the governor's level can trickle down to the legislative races.

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I think it's way too early to have any sense about whether whoever the nominee is will emerge

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as a very strong candidate or not. So meanwhile you're in the field again with a new poll to

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share with us next Wednesday. Things keep changing so you have to keep doing new polls.

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This poll that will come out next Wednesday is only about Democratic primary voters,

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only about them, and we'll certainly ask about opinions of Crowley vote again in the primary

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and also Governor Evers endorsement and whether people think that makes them more or less likely

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to support David Crowley. We will also be re-interviewing the people we've interviewed this past week,

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so we'll be able to see whether those undecided folks last week have moved any further towards

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decision making this week. The only drawback to this is it's a fairly short period of time,

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so we'll still have two more weeks to election day when this poll is finished.

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Well thank you for your work. Thank you.

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you