undo the protections of Roe v Wade. And they did exactly as he
intended. >> How might the debate
performances of the candidates move the needle in the 53 day
sprint to Election Day? We asked Marquette University Law School
poll director Charles Franklin out this week with his latest
survey. And hi, Charles. Good to be here. So your latest survey
was in the field before the debate. But does a successful
performance move the needle for a candidate?
>> I think historically, less and less recently than it did in
the past. I think good perspective is Joe Biden had an
absolutely terrible debate, and he only lost about four
percentage points in the polls before he dropped out. So I
think expecting a debate bump of any kind, three, 4 or 5 points
would be wildly out of line with what the last debate did. A
point or two, maybe, but it may also help bring people home to
their party's Moore solidify the votes for both sides.
>> So your poll was in the field immediately following the
did see some movement for Kamala Harris with 52% to 48% for
Harris over Donald Trump. How does that compare to your
polling last month? Yeah, that was a couple of points up for
Harris and a point down for Trump.
Remember the margin of error is 4.6. So each of those moves is
modest compared to the margin of error. But it does reinforce the
idea that Harris had a pretty good convention. And that that
showed up in this poll. >> It's also your first poll
with VP candidate Tim Walz on the ticket. What kind of
favorability does he have, and does he factor into this?
>> Of the four presidential and vice presidential, Walz is the
only one with a net positive favorability plus six more
favorable than unfavorable. But he also has the largest don't
know at 19%, that don't know enough about him yet, and so
initially, the reaction is strong. We asked the same
question of Walz that we asked about JD Vance. Do you think
he's an excellent, good, fair or poor choice among Democrats? 90%
think Walz is an excellent or good choice. Among Republicans,
it was 75%. That said, the same thing about JD Vance the week
after that convention. So both parties are quite satisfied with
their VP nominees. Democrats are a little bit more.
>> Let's take a look at the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race.
Among registered voters, it's 52% for Tammy Baldwin to 48% for
Eric Hovde. Now, this has tightened a little.
>> It has tightened a little. The range over recent polls has
been between about a four point Baldwin lead and about a seven
point lead. It was closer to five last time, so just a
smidgen closer. One thing that's happened is Hovde has been
getting better and better known. Only 22% still say they haven't
heard enough about him. Now that was 80% in January and this time
he made a little bit of progress on the favorable unfavorable
dimension. He's still net negative, but he's a little
better than he was last month. >> One thing that stood out to
me in your polling on this particular race was that
independents favor Baldwin by 65% to Hovde 33%.
>> The caution here is independents are a fairly small
sample. There are only about 6 or 8% of the public. So there's
a lot of margin of error there. But what we have seen
consistently is independents were favoring Trump, while Biden
was still in. They came to about evenly divided last month. This
month they're pretty strongly favoring both sets of Democrats,
Harris and Baldwin. I would be very cautious about thinking
this is a permanent position because of the sample size and
because independents are independents, they do change
their minds and they can be so critical in the last week or two
of the campaign making up their minds late.
>> Let's talk about enthusiasm to vote in your poll. This also
stood out. 72% of Democrats say they are very enthusiastic to
vote, compared to 63% of Republicans. Now, how have these
numbers shifted? Back in the spring and through
the point where Biden dropped out, Republicans were 10 to 15
points or even 20 points at one stage ahead of Democrats in
enthusiasm in July, when Biden dropped out and Harris had just
gotten in the race, we saw Democrats close the gap in
almost catch up to Republicans this month. Democrats have
pulled clearly ahead. I should add, Republicans got more
enthusiastic after their like they were lacking
enthusiasm. They gained as well. But they've held steady this
month while Democrats continued to rise.
>> What are the kinds of events that factor in particularly to
enthusiasm? thing is simply the change of
candidates that Joe Biden is still quite unpopular in the
state, only 41% approve of the job he was doing, and that was a
tremendous drag on Democrats and boost to Republicans. With him
out and Harris having had a good stretch, news wise and
presentation wise, I think that is a big part of this shift.
>> I'm talking about issues. The top three for Wisconsin
respondents were the economy, abortion and immigration was, of
course, the economy kind of way outside. But there's a sharp
partisan split in. Who cares about what issues.
partisan groups Republicans, independents and Democrats put
the economy either first or second. So that's very high for
everybody. Democrats put abortion as their top issue, but
independents put it way down as an important issue. And for
Republicans, they put immigration as the second
highest issue. But independents put that quite a ways down. So
if you think about trying to appeal to those undecided or
independent voters, the economy is the place where everybody
cares. And then you've got two issues that really appeal to the
bases of each party, but don't seem to appeal that much to