The Madison office of the Independent Police Monitor
will also investigate. Turning to election news in
the topsy turvy Democratic primary for governor, some
insights from this week's Marquette Law School poll.
Even though it was in the field before Lieutenant
Governor Sara 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
row 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% 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's 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?
>> Thus, 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%
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 vote.
>> When we asked second choices of people that
supported her about an equal number, went to
Mandela Barnes and went in, went to Joel Brennan
smaller percentage, a good bit smaller, went to Hong
and a small percentage went to Kelda.
>> Roys so you described the undecideds at 45%.
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
asked 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
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 shakeup 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 and 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 to Election Day when this