What kind of bellwether were elections earlier this month and 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 and midterm elections next year. We turn to
Marquette University Law School poll director Charles Franklin out this week with his latest
national poll and Charles, nice to see you. Good to be here. So in terms of that first question,
what do you think of whether November for 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 is 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 gap,
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 margin
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 are 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 going
to 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 for 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, it's well over 70% 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 well since the beginning of this
term and the initial promise to release the documents, then not to release them now,
to release them 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%
disapproval. 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 independence in the country, and these are historically pretty abysmal numbers for
any president with independence at this point. Maybe it'll turn around. He's still strong with
Republicans, 85% approval with them, and 5% with Democrats, but independence 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 swing 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 leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Have a good Thanksgiving.