be. Anthony Chergosky, thanks very much.
>> Thank you. >> This week's Inside
Wisconsin politics took up Barnes, dropping out this
week's candidate debate and also new poll results that
helped inform Mandela Barnes decision to suspend
his campaign. Here's NPR's Shawn Johnson, Anya van
Wagtendonk, and "Here& Now" reporter Zac Schultz.
>> His departure kind of leaves the race in some
ways, where it was, where there seems to be this
growing consensus out there that this is Francesca Hong
race to lose. She is a democratic socialist, which
is sort of defined this campaign. Anya, you've
covered her campaign. You profiled her for Wisconsin
Public Radio. How is she presenting her brand of
politics to primary voters and also potentially
critics as this primary closes out?
>> Yeah, I think she's been really consistent, not just
throughout this campaign, but throughout her
political career. I think a little bit what we saw on
the debate stage was her trying to nuance some of
that, perhaps for a more general election, again, as
she is this kind of runaway favorite at the moment. I
saw some criticism actually from national DSA members
on social media who were saying essentially, oh,
she's not socialist enough, but I think she understands
that there is going to be a pretty ready made line of
attack from Republicans based on some of her past
statements based on calling for defunding the police,
based on aligning with certain, you know, sort of
far left, more like agitated sort of online
figures that that gives them easy things to kind of
clip, which can really kind of be hard to oppose from a
more kind of nuanced position. And so I think we
saw her on the debate stage, kind of trying out some of
these more bitable, clippable ways of
approaching her politics. >> Zac, we had a couple
polls out this week. They both showed Francesca Hong
with at least a 20 point lead. You know, one of them
showed Mandela Barnes. Marquette showed Mandela
Barnes in second, David Crowley down at about 7%.
But in the Marquette poll, we're looking at a third of
voters still undecided. Now Mandela Barnes is out of
the race. You got all those undecided voters. David
Crowley is still there. Could this race shake up
and change in the closing days?
>> Well, every time we say no, we're proven wrong. It
does get shaken up by larger events than what we
probably could have the question is, is there
enough room for anyone to gain enough ground to catch
the lead that Francesca Hong looks like she has?
Just talking about those absentee ballots that have
been cast, they're not getting counted. Bakke the
question will be, once this race is all over, will the
margin of votes that Mandela Barnes and
Rodriguez received add up to the amount that the
second place person took? Or will they have made a
difference in some spoiling manner? That will be
interesting math to see, but by then we'll have a
winner. >> The full episode of