poll is finished. >> Wow. Well, thank you for
your work. >> Thank you.
>> For more insights on the twists and turns we look to
this week's Inside Wisconsin Politics. In this
excerpt, we hear from our own Zac Schultz and PFAS
Shawn Johnson. >> Of the Democrats in the
race right now, not including David Crowley
only Mandela Barnes defeats Tom Tiffany in a head to
head matchup by a 44 to 40% split among registered
voters. Tiffany leads Francesca Hong 43 to 40%,
so a plus four for Mandela Barnes, minus three for
Francesca Hong Zac. I mean, I think it kind of begs the
question, why did the establishment not rally
around Mandela Barnes? >> One of the distinctions
is Barnes came in with the most name recognition of
everyone due to his 2022 US Senate run, his close loss
to Ron Johnson. And it was always a question because
he also had the highest negatives that came with
that hangover from that election. And he started
running this race as the front runner. He introduced
himself as saying, I'm the one to take on Tom Tiffany.
He did the thing where he ignores the rest of the
field and kind of pretends they weren't there. And
then partway through this election, I think he or his
campaign realized, oh no, Francesca Hong is there. I
do have to take her seriously. So we kind of
had to shift his tone to talking about his
competitors, where I think at first he was running the
2022 U.S. Senate primary, where all of his
competitors dropped out at the end, and he basically
had the field to himself. That didn't happen. So it
is a question of, did the rest of the field say
you've had your chance and you couldn't make your case?
Now we're going to go with someone else, or is it
simply that they think her negatives are too high,
despite the head to head matchup? Looking good.
>> Why are so many people not sure about this? What
we thought was going to be a very high profile race
for governor. >> Because those 48% make
up a lot of people who don't watch this podcast,
so they are not as informed. There are a lot of people
who don't pay attention to politics until the very end
there. We just got the first campaign flier in my
mailbox this morning. They're starting to come.
Those people will follow along. Another thing that
happens in primaries pretty regularly is people wait to
see if there is a frontrunner. They don't
like to waste their vote on someone who will not win,
or they're going to say, well, I like this person,
but they're in fourth place and they're not polling
very high. Why would I throw it behind them? Who
is my next favorite? Which is another good thing that
the Marquette poll does is they do. Who is your next
favorite in line? Another thing to look at is Tom.
Tiffany is unopposed in the Republican primary. There's
still 30% undecided there. >> Now they're.
>> Finding they're going to vote for the Republican.
But I think you can take that 30%, put it over and
compare it to the 48% for the Democrats and go, okay,
there's just a lot of people that either aren't
tuned in yet, or they're waiting to the last minute
to figure out who is actually the frontrunner.