rallies. Reporting for here. Now. I'm Murv Seymour in the
aftermath of Joe Biden's withdrawal, Charles Franklin set
to work on a new poll looking at how Kamala Harris squares
against Donald Trump. >> This new touch point in the
fast moving race for President with the Marquette University
Law School poll out this week, the polling looks at both
national numbers and the state of play in Wisconsin. Poll
director Charles Franklin is here to walk us through the
results. And thanks for being here.
>> So this poll went into the field before Kamala Harris
picked Tim Walz for VP. What's your sense of that choice for
Democrats and whether he helps Harris in Wisconsin?
>> The short answer is it's too early to tell what little
national polling we have before he was picked shows that over
60% of the public doesn't know enough about him to have an
opinion. So this immediate rollout is a critical time for
establishing that image for Democrats to do it positively.
Republicans to be critical of him, so I think the best answer
is we don't know. Vice presidents usually aren't a big
effect. The best estimates is they boost the vote in their
home state by between 1 and 2 percentage points. But that's
just a generalization. >> So at the top of the ticket,
your national poll shows that among likely voters, it's 53%
for Harris and 47% for Trump. Now that's a definite uptick
over the Biden-trump matchup. >> Yes, Biden and Trump had been
running sort of head to head. This is definitely better in the
national numbers than it is in the state numbers that we'll get
to, I think what we saw was a big boost in how people view
Kamala Harris, and especially a boost in enthusiasm for
Democrats. Wisconsin numbers. Then among
again, likely voters, the numbers sit at 50% for Harris
and 49% for Trump in your latest poll. So much has changed in
this race, with Joe Biden bowing out. But it's still running
about even. Yeah, here in the state, as opposed to the
national numbers, we were virtually tied in June before
the debate. after the debate and the
replacement with Harris. What that misses, though, is how much
Biden's support fell off between the debate and when he dropped
out. The polling averages of other people's polls, not mine,
because we didn't poll in between, showed Biden losing
between 3 and 4 percentage points. Trump opening up a 4 or
5 point lead in this poll. When we asked if Biden had stayed in,
would you vote for Biden or for Trump? Trump was leading by 4 or
5 points. >> Well, and speaking of Biden
jumping out and Kamala Harris jumping in, let's talk about
enthusiasm to vote in Wisconsin in your current poll, you say
61% say they are very enthusiastic about voting.
That's up from 46% in June. >> Yes, a 15 point increase in
being enthusiastic all year long. We've seen enthusiasm
running between 15 and 20 points below where it was at the same
time in the 2020 election cycle, and that had not budged from
last November through June. But now this substantial 15 point
rise, in enthusiasm. >> But how does this break down
by party, then? >> Not surprisingly, it's
Democrats who've had the biggest bump up. They're up 22 points in
enthusiasm. They had languished considerably even in June before
the debate. Republicans had also gone up by about seven points.
And that represents I think, the convention bounce for the
nominee of nomination of Donald Trump, as well as perhaps some
post assassination attempt effect. Biden's dropping out,
though. Really stepped on the post-convention bounce that you
might have expected for the Republicans.
kind of erased the Republican advantage in that way, right?
>> I think so it's so hard to separate these things out
because during the convention, there was the sense that Trump
was very likely to win. And that shows up in our data of public
opinion as well, once Biden jumped out, Harris came in and
the Democrats consolidated convention got largely
nullified. Senate race in Wisconsin.
Democrat Tammy Baldwin is up five points on her Republican
challenger, Eric Hovde, among likely voters, but up eight
points when respondents were asked if you had to choose. I'm
wondering what are the implications of that question
and those results? >> the she's been up 5 to 7
points in most of our polling since Hufty got in the race.
About 14% say they haven't made up their minds in the Senate
race. And it's those folks that we ask, well, if you had to
choose, what would you do? It doesn't shift the balance very
much. A couple of points, but it does show that still voters are
making up their minds about these two Senate candidates, and
especially Hufty, who's than Baldwin.
>> As to issues in the race, the most important issues to
Wisconsin voters are these the economy one abortion, two.
Immigration three. Now Wisconsin voters placed the issue of
abortion, of at higher importance than nationally. Does
that surprise you? >> Yes. It's an interesting
thing. Partly that may be because of what happened after
the Dobbs decision overturned Roe versus Wade, and we went
back to our 1800s law for a while. And then court cases
about that. What we've seen in Wisconsin all along is that
Democrats have ranked abortion number one, but independents,
including now put it fairly low down on their priority list, as
do Republicans. This is a little bit of a shift raising that.
Immigration has also been falling a little bit over time.
Now just barely into third place behind abortion. But there does
seem to be a gap between Wisconsin opinion on this and