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- [00:00]
A
I'll just say, obviously you guys know each other. Feel free to like, you don't have to wait for me to throw a question to each of you like, this isn't cnn. We should think of this as like we're at a bar and you can disagree with each other, add to each other's points, like if I start moving on, but you have something to add, I can always edit it, like jump in and say like, oh, you're totally right. Or like actually, Craig, not on that point.
- [00:25]
B
Craig, you ignorant slut.
- [00:31]
A
Exactly.
- [00:31]
B
I just got wanted to get that in first.
- [00:34]
C
Thank you.
- [00:47]
A
Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druke. And in case one progressive versus moderate swing state showdown wasn't enough for you, Wisconsin is running it back this week with its Democratic gubernatorial primary. Democratic socialist state legislator Francesca Hong has led the pack for much of the race, but the non socialist alternative has oscillated as candidates have dropped out of the race and one even got back in in the final stretch. That alternative has been Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who dropped out of the race on July 8 and re entered on July 18. Hong has gotten all kinds of attention for some radical things that she said over the years, and the Wisconsin Democratic establishment is working to avoid a situation in which she faces off against Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany in the general election. So far, the polling doesn't show anything other than a Hong league. But between the recent chaos of the primary and the miss in Michigan last week, a large polling error doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility. And we couldn't talk about Wisconsin and polling without going to the professionals at the Marquette University Wallet Poll. So joining me today is the director of that poll, Charles Franklin. Welcome back to the podcast, Charles.
- [02:01]
B
Great to be here.
- [02:02]
A
Also joining us is Craig Gilbert Lubar, center fellow at Marquette Law and alum of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Welcome to the pod, Craig.
- [02:09]
C
Great to be with you.
- [02:11]
A
So we're also going to take the opportunity today to dive into the political mood of the country's quintessential swing state according to recent Marquette Law polling and zoom out with some of the polling that they've done nationally as well. And I will also say that today is particularly fun for me because back when I was 22 and a producer at Wisconsin Public Radio, I used to book Charles and Craig to talk about Wisconsin politics on the drive time show that I produced back then. So those were I don't know if you remember at this point, but those were back in the days before Wisconsin was really thought of as a perennial swing state, at least on the national level. It seems like a life time ago.
- [02:49]
C
I always have thought of Wisconsin as a swing state going back to the late 80s. But you're right, I mean, it's, it's just reached a whole nother level of tippiness in the last decade and a half.
- [03:01]
A
Absolutely. And I'll also shout out Minnesota, Vermont, Connecticut and Alabama, which also have primaries on Tuesday. But I'm really just going to let my Wisconsin bias flag fly today and we're really going to zoom in on Wisconsin, so. So, Charles, what do the polls show in this Wisconsin gubernatorial primary just one day away from the final day?
- [03:23]
B
Yeah. Francesca Hong is a state legislator from Madison who is well known in Madison, but didn't have much of a statewide base. But she has led each of the five statewide polls we've done since last October, often with very small percentages of the vote because we've had a huge undecided early in the race. But the consistency in which she's been in first place is pretty impressive. And in our final poll in mid July, she was at 38% support, but we also had 34% undecided at that point. Back then the second place candidate was at 16%, but we've had that second place candidate, Mandela Barnes, drop out in the meantime. So it's been a wild ride with candidates dropping out, getting back in, dropping out. Still, Hong's substantial lead is I think, the main story. But the second story, the uncertainty is there's a lot undecided.
- [04:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, looking at the averages today, and there are a lot of caveats that come with those averages. Francesca Hong is at about 50% support with David Crowley at about 30% support. A 20 percentage point lead even in a statewide primary seems pretty formidable, but especially given what happened in Michigan last week with a 12 point polling error there, how should we think about the likelihood of error in the polling of this race if we're wrong?
- [05:04]
B
All of the polls are wrong because Hong is not just led mine, she's led every other poll that's been done since June in the state. But Michigan proves that you can all be wrong. And so that's the concern. I think if you want telltales in the data, it would be that Hahn does extremely well with young voters and with very liberal voters in the Democratic primary, but she does not so well with old voters and with moderate Democrats. But we've seen a relatively high undecided with both of those groups with moderates and with older voters. So that's where the extra uncertainty comes in. I guess the last part would be older voters virtually always turn out at higher rates than younger voters. So that could also be a surprise there if the turnout is significantly different from what we're expecting from the polling.
- [06:04]
C
Yeah, well, I think at this point, it would be a surprise if Hong lost the primary, but I think it would also be a surprise if she won it by quite as much as the polling is suggesting. I mean, one of the huge wild cards that Charles alluded to is just, you know, who's going to vote, how many people are going to vote. Wisconsin has an open primary. I mean, if you look back at the history of these primaries, you're getting, you know, between 10 and 15% of the entire electorate voting at a contested Democratic primary. That could be anywhere from five to 700,000 people. But if we get a bigger turnout than that, it introduces a lot of uncertainty into the outcome. On the one hand, the polling suggests that Hong's supporters are more motivated. That could be inflating her standing in the polls. But also, if it's true they're more motivated, then that's a good sign for her in the election. So she's clearly a favorite going into this. I think it would be kind of a big surprise in the political world if she didn't win the primary. But as Charles said, a lot of volatility, a lot of uncertainty going into Tuesday.
- [07:10]
A
You bring up an important point, Craig. What are the challenges of pulling a race like this in an open primary state? Right. Anyone can go in and pull a ballot for the Republican primary or the Democratic primary. In this case, the Republican primary is not particularly competitive, so perhaps more folks are voting in the Democratic primary. How do you go about figuring out the likely electorate?
- [07:34]
B
Because Wisconsin doesn't have registration by party, polling is really the only way you can answer that question. We're seeing about 4 to 6% Republicans making up taking part in the Democratic primary. I mean, of all Democratic primary voters, 4 to 6% call themselves Republicans. On the other hand, those Republicans that are crossing over are not voting for Fran Hong, which is sort of the strategy of how to stick the Democrats with a supposedly less competitive candidate. Of the Republicans crossing over, quite a few of them are voting for one of the more moderate Democrats. So I think it's, you know, a lot of armchair strategizing on social media, but a lot of the crossover vote is just folks crossing over and voting their honest preferences rather than voting strategically. No, there was some of that, certainly.
- [08:31]
A
But beyond that in a race where young people are particularly motivated and have a very clear choice, but also don't usually vote in elections like this, how do you figure out whether or not they're actually going to show up in the numbers they say they might do? You take folks at their word. Is there a series of questions you might ask them to determine how likely of a voter they are?
- [08:53]
B
You can use the. The voter file and whether they voted in previous primaries. The trouble with that, for young people, they weren't eligible for very many previous primaries. What we found, looking at all the different ways to get at this, is that just asking people works almost as well as using the voter file and other material. And in a volatile primary like this one, where people may update their behavior, there's nothing better, I think, than asking people. We also do look at the differences depending on how high or how low turnout might be. And for that, we don't see any real qualitative difference between squeezing the sample down to just the most likely voters versus a broader sample of people who are probably going to vote, but where there's not quite as much certainty. That doesn't always hold. Of course. Sometimes you can get big differences between registered or pretty likely and very likely, but in this case, it has not made any qualitative difference. Hong has been in the lead no matter how tightly we screened for turnout.
- [10:07]
A
Yeah, this gets us to a kind of precarious situation for polling sometimes. Like, what is the electorate going to actually look like? It reminds me of an interview that I did with anseller, you know, famed Iowa pollster back in the day, and she would say, you know, when it comes to the likely voter screen, just ask people and sort of leave it at that. And of course, she always said, this is the way that I do polling. I'm either going to be a goose or I'm going to be golden election after election. She was golden, of course, in 2024, showing a lead for Kamala Harris in Iowa. And the run up to election day, it seemed like there was a particular type of voter that was more likely to say that they were, in fact going to vote. And the Crowley campaign in this instance, seems to be suggesting that something similar could be happening here. So the Crowley campaign put out an internal poll over the weekend, which leads us to our Good data, Bad data or not data segment of the podcast.
- [11:07]
C
We'll.
- [11:07]
A
We'll do this quickly here, but I'm going to quote from reporting on the Crowley campaign. The Crowley campaign highlighted a new internal poll taken August 4th to 5th of 753 likely Democratic primary voters in a four way race. Top line showed Hong with 40, 32% of the support and Crowley with 24%. But when voters were read informed questions about the candidates and the results were calculated to match the age of the electorate that voted in 2022, the memo said Hong and Crowley were tied at 32%. A lot of caveats there, Craig. Is that good data, bad data or not data?
- [11:46]
C
I guess it's not data. I mean, they're kind of unskilling their own poll. It's pretty comical in that respect. On the other hand, it does tell you something that, you know, the trailing campaign, even in their own polling, they're trailing significantly and you know, you have to go through some contortions to get the race on an even and level playing field.
- [12:07]
B
Yeah, there's a very reasonable use of polling here in the sense that they raised this question about what the age makeup of the electorate will be and argue from some data that it'll be older than what they're own poll showed. But even with that adjustment, it only moves the margin by a few points. It's only this so called informed ballot that gets it to a tie. And informed ballots are very tricky. That's where the pollster reads a description of each of the candidates and then says, now knowing that, who would you vote for? I'm much more dubious about those though. Campaigns do use them quite a bit to test messages. But I think the adjustment for different age profiles is not a crazy thing to do. It's just that it doesn't solve the problem that the Crowley campaign wanted this poll to solve, which is to show that they're much more competitive than the polling shows. Even with the adjustment. They narrow the margin, but they still trail Hong by quite a bit. Yeah.
- [13:13]
A
Okay. Well, I want to go back in time a little bit for folks who haven't been following the twists and turns of this primary. Craig, how did this race winnow to Francesca Hong versus David Crowley?
- [13:27]
C
Well, the short answer is the two people who on paper were the favored candidates, the expected front runners in the Democratic field are no longer in the field. The current Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez. The former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. Mandela Barnes had the highest name ID and very positive name id. His campaign just never really went anywhere. He was the nominee in 2022 who came close but ultimately failed to one seat, Ron Johnson for the U.S. senate. And so the story of this race, as much as what Fran Hong has been able to accomplish and as effective as her campaign has been. Has been the ineffectiveness to some degree, the spectacular ineffectiveness of other candidates in the field. Ultimately, Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez campaign just sort of blew up over kind of campaign finance report disasters. And Mandela Barnes up dropping out after showing no real momentum across all the polling in the course of this race. So now we're left with several candidates, one of whom we've talked about, David Crowley, who was kind of dragged back into the race after these other candidates imploded, and then a few candidates who have been polling at even lower levels. So it's the chaos outside of the Han candidacy, the churn, the upheaval, and also just kind of the ineffectiveness of those candidates that I think is the story of this race.
- [14:54]
B
Yeah.
- [14:54]
A
One of the stories of Michigan, and not to tie you all too closely to your eastern neighbor, was that the establishment didn't get any of the candidates that they really wanted to actually get into the race. So in Wisconsin, were there stronger candidates who just didn't run, or is this the Democratic bench in Wisconsin?
- [15:15]
C
Well, one of the stronger candidates was the governor, but he's in his early 70s, so it was not a shock that he didn't run. I think if he had run, it would be. This would be a completely different outlook for the general election. Another potentially stronger candidate was the attorney general, Josh Call, who decided that he didn't want to run either. Neither One of Wisconsin's two Democratic U.S. house members were interested in getting into the race. So I guess you could say this kind of is the Democratic bench in Wisconsin.
- [15:49]
A
We've talked a little bit about the logistics and the polling, but what has this race been about? I'll say from a national perspective, which I guess is where I sit now, no longer in the control room at Wisconsin Public Radio, this race seems to be about whether or not Francesca Hong would like to cancel Thanksgiving, the degree to which she would like to defund the police, and whether that's on the road to abolishing the police and then backtracking and saying that as governor, she couldn't actually do any of those things. It's been a lot about, to quote AOC on ABC's this Week on Sunday, quote, unquote, woke one. And the kinds of positions that progressive and socialist Democrats took back then. Has that been the focus in the race so far on the ground in Wisconsin?
- [16:39]
B
It's been part of it in the sense of the argument that Hong is too far to the left to win statewide. That's part of the electability argument. But I would say these things about Thanksgiving and other stuff has more come up here at the end, especially through national media. Rather than being central to the campaign, Hong has pushed her working class economic agenda. That includes increased taxes on the wealthy, for example, though she's also pushed a moratorium on data centers. But the other thing is that the candidates have not really gone after each other. Even here at the very end when you might expect negative ads to really dominate, the candidates have been very mild with each other. They had one and only one debate a couple of weeks ago and none of the candidates really went after Hong in that debate at all, which is very surprising from a political strategy and the imperatives of how do you take down a front runner when you're in second or third place? I'd also echo what Craig said, that the candidates that might have emerged, Barnes and Rodriguez, also just didn't run very effective campaigns. If you look at the Barnes campaign, he opened with this big advantage in name ID and having run statewide, but his polling is completely flat over the course of the last eight months, making no gains, but also no losses. Whereas Francesca Hong gained steadily throughout the campaign, Rodriguez was gaining a bit, but not as much as Hong when her financial disaster hit and she had to drop out. So as Craig said, you point to the other candidates and their failure to develop a set of issues that they could use effectively against Hong and we're really seeing arguments about management of government. I can bring people together versus Hong's aggressive. It's not working for the working class. And I will, I would just add
- [18:53]
C
there's this thing that happens in multi candidate primaries where somebody emerges with momentum and none of their competitors wants to go on the attack because they're afraid about their own position vis a vis the other candidates that are vying to be the alternative. And this happens to some degree four years ago in the primary that Mandela Barnes won for the U.S. senate and then went on to lose the general election. It's happened in this race. This has not been a nasty primary at all, even though some people kind of think of it as being divisive. If anything, I think Democrats may look back if they don't end up winning in November and regret not having a more vigorous primary in the lead up to this race.
- [19:37]
A
Yeah. I have to say here in reflecting on this race, as a former Wisconsin resident, when Mandela Barnes got in, I thought, you know, he's probably too liberal. Democrats likely learned their lesson when he went down to Ron Johnson by a percentage point. Probably Wisconsin Democrats will try to nominate somebody who's more Middle of the road. Somebody who took the Tony Evers approach. You know, after being locked out of power at the state level in Wisconsin for so long, Tony Evers managed to beat Scott Walker with a middle of the road, conciliatory approach towards Republicans, et cetera, et cetera. And then not only did Mandela Barnes not take off, Democrats ended up settling likely on an even further left candidate here. And to add some sort of perspective as to who Francesca Hong is, she's a state legislator who represents the single most progressive part of the state. We're talking about the isthmus that Madison, Wisconsin sits on. And then also the east side of Madison, which as somebody who once upon a time lived in this district, it's a level of progressiveness that like you don't even see in Portlandia in the Pacific Northwest. It's, you can imagine like worker run grocery stores and you know, a rec league of sports for every kind of sexual or gender identity you can imagine. It's 80% white. And we know that within the Democratic Party, white voters are amongst the most liberal. Republicans always like to refer to Madison as what is it, like 70 square miles surrounded by reality. Is that what it is? And so this is basically what they're talking about. The part of Madison, Wisconsin, Dane county, which is the most progressive, lefty part of the state, sort of concentrated down into its most progressive form that is really sort of doesn't speak the way that most Democrats, let alone median voters speak, doesn't really see the world the way that most median voters see the world. So I'm curious, as an outsider now, how does somebody like Francesca Hong become the leading candidate in the race? Has she convinced the normie Democrats? Is it just the fact that, you know, Wisconsin has become so politically divided that now you're either like lefty progressive or a Republican. How do you tell the story of Francesca Hong's rise?
- [22:04]
C
Yeah, so it's when we went back with Charles's data and looked at the makeup of people who identify as Democrats over like, what is it, the 15 or 16 years that Charles has been polling in Wisconsin, you see something really interesting, which is that the percentage of Democrats who identify as moderates and conservatives has gone down markedly. And the percentage of Democrats who identify as not just liberal but very liberal has basically doubled in a decade or more. So now you're Talking about almost 30% of self identified Democrats calling themselves very liberal. So the moderates plus the conservatives used to vastly outnumber that kind of left flank of the Democratic Party, the very liberals. But now they're almost the same size. And so this doesn't explain everything, but it certainly explains, I think, how a candidate who might not have had a prayer in past cycles has been so effective in this cycle. There are still a lot of non lefty Democrats in Wisconsin. I think some of them are maybe supporting Fran Hong not because of her specific issue positions, but because of their sort of mood and mindset and the frustration with the Democratic Party and wanting a fighter, someone to take on, you know, you know, just that kind of vibes candidacy that we've seen, that vibes affect we've seen in other states.
- [23:34]
B
I think that's all straight right on. I think the one addition I would point to is there's been this phenomena here in the second Trump term of favorability towards the Democratic Party being lower than favorability to the Republican Party. You see that in our national polling as well as our state polling. But what stands out in that is that the reason Democratic favorability is lower than Republican is because Democrats are less favorable to their own party, while Republicans are a lot more favorable to their party. So who are these Democrats unfavorable to the Democratic Party? That's not primarily coming from moderate or the handful of conservative Democrats. It's actually coming from the most liberal, the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party. So I think that's where you put these two trends together a little bit. There are more very liberal Democrats in the Wisconsin Democratic Party than there were 15 years ago. But they're also the people most frustrated with the party nationally. And that's a good recipe for mobilizing behind a candidate that seems to represent that frustration.
- [24:50]
C
And the one thing I would add to that is Hong is winning all those voters. I mean, it's like, okay, if very liberal voters are a third of the primary electorate, roughly speaking, and she's getting 80% of them, that's a pretty sizable foundation for a multi candidate primary. And so it's just the fact that she's winning almost all of them, just like she's getting a ridiculous share of younger voters. That's her base and it. And it's a base and other candidates don't have an equivalent foundation that they're running on.
- [25:20]
A
I was going to talk about electability for a second and actually this gets into it. Exactly. But given what you just said, let's touch that hot stove for a second. I mean, do you see this as a path for a quote unquote, very liberal candidate or. I think they would self identify as Democratic, socialist or Progressive candidate in 2028. And then I promise we will get back to the race at hand.
- [25:40]
B
Well, I think it can certainly be an issue in the national Democratic presidential primary, but you want to look back to 2020, when you know that most progressive wing of the party had its moment and was surging until South Carolina and Joe Biden wins and the party reverts back towards the middle. But I do think that the intense disappointment on the most progressive wing of the party with how the party has responded to Trump certainly raises the possibility of this, of a similar kind of effect. On the other hand, two years is a ways off and, you know, let's see how this plays out in Michigan and perhaps in Wisconsin. It doesn't really matter for deep, deep blue districts like Manhattan or Denver, Colorado, where we saw Democratic socialist candidates win, but it sure is an attention getter in much more competitive states like Michigan, where it's vital for winning the Senate, and Wisconsin, where the governorship is up for grabs and so is the legislature up for grabs here. So there could be real consequences depending on how it turns out. And we'll get to electability in Wisconsin in a minute. But I think that's the great unknown. And whether lessons are learned from this or not, remember those Tea party candidates in 2010 who lost winnable races, but it didn't necessarily prevent similar candidates from running again in subsequent primaries?
- [27:23]
A
Yeah. Let's talk about electability in Wisconsin. What does the early polling show about Francesca Hong versus Tom Tiffany, the basically certain Republican nominee, or David Crowley, Milwaukee County Executive, versus Tom Tiffany?
- [27:40]
B
Basically, it's a close race no matter who the candidates are. Crowley was running a point or two better than Hong. Hong was trailing Tiffany by 3 or 4% in our early July poll when we asked this of all registered voters in the state and Mandela Barnes was actually leading Tiffany at that time. Another one of the ironies of who's dropped out here. But when we move to likely voters, then it was a dead tie between Tiffany and Hong. And that reflects the greater Democratic enthusiasm that we've been seeing in both state and national polls all year, with Democrats 5 to 8 points more likely to say they're certain they're going to vote in the fall. However, that can be volatile and can change. I think my main takeaway is that Hong may be a little weaker against Tiffany than some of the others, but it's not yet proven that she cannot win. It's just that she needs that very motivated Democratic base to be solidly behind her. And the question is, will she be able to motivate the moderates in the Democratic Party to the same extent that she's very much motivating the most progressive part of the party.
- [28:58]
A
And that's also in an environment where Democrats have the wind at their back to some extent. I mean, you've asked about the generic ballot in Wisconsin specifically, how much more Democratic is Wisconsin in 2026 than it was in 2024?
- [29:14]
B
Well, the generic ballot here, the generic legislative ballot that we've asked here, is about 4 points Democratic lead again with registered voters, and goes up a little bit more with likely voters. So that generic legislative ballot is stronger than Hong's performance, or for that matter, Crowley's performance when we asked about him. The big issue in Wisconsin is as the fall campaign ramps up and the Tiffany campaign in particular becomes a major media player, does that rally Republican troops in a way that they haven't been rallied during the spring when there was the Democratic primary that got most of
- [29:54]
A
the attention GD Politics is powered by you, the listeners. If you enjoy the show, the data driven analysis, the genuine curiosity and lack of partisan bs, and yes, sometimes the silliness too, please consider becoming a paid subscriber at gdpolitics. Com. Paid subscribers help make the podcast possible, and they also get twice the number of episodes and access to the paid subscriber chat where you can send me whatever questions you've got. Independent political media only works if the people who value it support it. So if GD Politics is part of your week, head to GDPolitics.com and become a paid subscriber. That's GDPolitics.com I so appreciate it. Thank you. When it comes to electability in Wisconsin, there's a long standing debate in politics, maybe especially on the Democratic side, about, you know, whether you really need to persuade persuadable voters, turn out people who probably support you but are low propensity voters. It's kind of a silly debate because oftentimes the kind of candidate who will persuade swing voters is also charismatic enough to get people off the couch and into the voting booth. But there are some actual sort of set pieces that matter in this debate, which is how swingy a state is. Back at 5:38 we used to score states by elasticity and things that made states more elastic. For example, we're having high numbers of non religious white voters. So think New Hampshire for example, a very swingy state where voters are actually changing their mind and it's worth campaigning to the median voter, especially in a state like that. Then you have a state more like North Carolina, that's a swing state because it is closely divided, but the voters are actually not changing their minds all that much. You know, you have large black populations, you have secular, college educated white groups of voters in the research triangle, and then you have large white religious portions of the state that are reliable Republicans. And so you might get a close race in New Hampshire or a close race in North Carolina, but for very different reasons. How does Wisconsin fall within this sort of elasticity debate, which may give us some sense of what a race into November is going to look like?
- [32:17]
C
So a lot of our elasticity is what you said, which is so evenly divided. I mean, it really is without peer as a cliffhanger state in modern times. And so the swings that occur are partly. I mean, there are some swingier parts of the state, and we can talk about that where there are voters who have a history of shifting around. But a lot of the tippiness is simply turnout factors. And a state that's so close that even a really small segment, a small sliver of swing voters is going to tip it one way or the other. I mean, I saw a headline recently that referred to, you know, can a socialist win in a moderate state like Wisconsin? And moderate was an interesting choice of words because it's really not a moderate state. I mean, there are moderates in Wisconsin, but it's a purple state. It's an evenly divided state. And Charles's polling has showed that actually, as moderates have left both parties to some degree, it means that those independent, you know, true independent voters who may or may not vote incidentally, are increasingly a moderate segment of the electorate. So they are. There is this small core of swingy voters that in a typical Wisconsin election is enough to flip a state. But the other huge factor is turnout. And we've seen, you know, in a state that has elected repeatedly Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin, turnout has a lot to do with it. And that usually benefits the party not in the White House. And Basically, I think nine of the last 10 elections for governor have been lost by the president's party in Wisconsin. The one exception to that was Tony Evers last victory when Joe Biden was
- [34:00]
B
president, something that actually Craig has written a lot about. So I'm sort of stepping on his turf. But how polarized Wisconsin became in the 2000 teens? It was polarized to begin with, but the election of Scott Walker in 2010 and the fights over public sector unions in 2011 deeply polarized the state well before the emergence of Donald Trump and his brand of maga populism. The other thing that's unusual about Wisconsin is that our non college and rural population is not as solidly Republican as it is in other states. So if you look at the north and west of Wisconsin, which is largely rural and has some small cities in it, it's very Republican, but it's not nearly as Republican as comparable counties in, say, Indiana are deeply, deeply red. And so as a result we have deep blue cities. But our reddest parts of the state are potentially places that could become much more Republican if they started to match voting patterns nationally, but which often are a bit less Republican than you would predict based on that educational and rural nature of the state. So those are other things that keep us more competitive than we might be. If the most rural parts of the state started to look more like Indiana, that would push us notably off the balance. And also our suburbs have been moving in a Democratic direction but are still pretty Republican, whereas suburbs of some of the other major cities in the country have become blue. Ours are less red than they used to be, but giving 58 to 59% Republican rather than 15 years ago when they were going 65% or 70% Republican.
- [36:06]
C
Yeah. Just to add on to Charles's thought, is that another way of saying that is that even though white working class voters in Wisconsin have shifted in a Republican direction, they still make up a much larger percentage of the Democratic electorate in Wisconsin than they do in most other states. So they're terribly important to Democrats. And it also makes in this race, Wisconsin, a pretty interesting test of the proposition that a candidate like Fran Hong, a Democratic socialist, can, you know, effectively make an argument about economics to white non college voters in a pretty remark, you know, over, you know, disproportionately white blue collar state.
- [36:50]
B
And that will be the really interesting thing in the fall, is whether Hahn can keep her campaign focused on those working class economic issues and avoid the negative side of what will surely be the attacks on her as a socialist. That has not really been a problem for her in the Democratic primary, where the other side's other candidates haven't really attacked her on this. But I think we can be certain that the day after the primary, that is this Wednesday, those attacks on her past statements and on her socialist views will certainly come to the fore. Can she turn those into an economic argument that works for her with these working class Democrats Craig is talking about? I think that's the potential for her to succeed in the fall, but it won't be easy when you anticipate what the attacks will look like.
- [37:46]
A
Yeah, you mentioned that Wisconsin is a state that elects both Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin. And from an identity perspective, maybe it's somewhat radical that the state persistently elects Tammy Baldwin. Of course, she's a gay woman in the Senate, which is unique for the Senate. But her campaigns are very targeted towards the exact kind of voters that you're talking about. I mean, every sort of launch video for every campaign she's run, she's on a dairy farm, she's with the rural white working class of Wisconsin, where Democrats really need to stem their losses if they're going to continue to win statewide because it is a very white state. And I think it has some of the highest levels of high school graduation in the country, but it's roughly median when it comes to college graduation rates. And so you could totally see a world in which some of the current political trends become exacerbated in Wisconsin it falls out of reach for Democrats. And so both Tony Evers and Tammy Baldwin are running these more moderate campaigns geared towards the median voter. But you also, there is this undercurrent in Wisconsin as we see in Francesca Hong, as we saw with Bernie Sanders win in 2016, that yes, it is an evenly divided state, but is it amongst the Democratic electorate a moderate state? And in many ways not so much. I mean, there is also a sort of history of frankly even socialism in Wisconsin. And that sort of, obviously there's been a lot of immigration from the Nordic and Northern European states that have themselves a stronger culture of democratic socialism and a safety net. And, and look, maybe that's quite far afield. And I wouldn't say that because I don't know Denmark or Sweden can vote in Democratic socialists, so can Wisconsin. But there is, you know, Milwaukee had a socialist mayor. The progressive era was strong in Wisconsin. How would you describe sort of Wisconsin's history with progressivism or socialism? And whether it's at all relevant today,
- [39:45]
C
I think it's a pretty mixed up history. I mean, you do have this fascinating history of multiple parties in the 20th century winning big elections and some of them including the progressive movement and the progressive wing of the Republican Party that eventually became its own party and the Social Democrats, the Milwaukee Socialists, the so called sewer socialists, which have been getting a moment today, but go back to the early part of the 20th century and kind of a socialist movement that was really focused on public services and good government. So I think that's all part of the history of the state and I think it's part of the explanation for what Charles was talking about, which is that again, demographically this should be a pretty Republican state, but it isn't because culturally it's less conservative given its demographics than you would expect. But then if you go back and look at the One other thought is if you go back and look at these big Democratic primaries, it's not like the candidate of the left always wins. I mean, that happened in Mandela Barnes primary, but there have been and it also happened in an interesting way when Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary in Wisconsin. But there have been plenty of other primaries where the winner was the less liberal candidate in the race. And that may be partly owing to the fact that we have an open primary and we have high turnout. So that kind of broadens the electorate. So all these things are kind of working in tension with each other. And we'll see how that nets out on Tuesday.
- [41:24]
A
And to add to that tension, of course, if we're going to look at history, Wisconsin is also the home of Senator Joseph McCarthy. And if we're looking back at 2016, Ted Cruz ultimately won that Republican primary, who was the more conservative purist? And ultimately Donald Trump seemed to win in the more moderate states like New Hampshire and so on when that primary was still competitive. Let's get out of 2016 or history further afield and talk about Wisconsin today and then maybe a little bit about the nation. In the recent Wisconsin polling that you've done, what is the mood? What are voters most concerned about? Are they happy with Tony Evers Democratic governance today? What are you seeing on the ground?
- [42:10]
B
Evers is popular. He's the most popular elected official that we poll on in the state. But that doesn't mean wildly popular. It means his job approval has consistently been above 50% in most of our polls throughout his nearly eight years in office. But it's in the low 50s, not in the 60s the way it was in the Tommy Thompson era back in the 80s and 90s. I think the terms of concerns, they look similar to the national concerns. Inflation and the cost of living is number one, and it has been number one since 2022. Other economic concerns like jobs in the economy and health insurance are also rated high, though the second place issue is immigration. That's boosted by Republican voters who put immigration as a high priority, even if they put inflation in the economy high as well. So I think it's easy to see a focus on economic issues. The one issue that Hong has particularly emphasized on data centers. Only 5% here in Wisconsin say data centers are the most Important issue for them. On the other hand, 76% of Wisconsin voters say they think the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. So people are quite opposed to data centers, but they don't rate it as super high on their priorities. But economic issues, they're right there front and center.
- [43:37]
A
How's the President doing in Wisconsin currently and stemming from that, thoughts about the issues that he's most engaged in currently? The war in Iran, for example, The Save America legislation which appears to now be completely dead in the water. Yeah. How do perspectives on Republicans look?
- [43:58]
B
Yeah. Trump's approval has declined steadily since he started the second term. He typically polls here a point or two or sometimes three points above the national average. So that puts him in the high 30s now 38 in the latest poll. That's an all time low for him, including both the first and the second term. But what we've seen is steady erosion of his support down a point or two from pole to pole to pole, rather than some precipitous collapse on the war that is stunningly unpopular. Just 14% told us they thought we'd achieved our goals there. Just 25% said they thought the war was worth it. And so there is, in addition to the economic drag on Republicans, the war is a big drag. And getting low approval, low percentages of Republicans saying we've achieved our goals there as well.
- [44:58]
C
To me, the two most worrisome sets of numbers for Republicans in Charles's polling. One is just that Trump has just been chronically in terrible shape with independent voters. Whether you're looking at independents, broadly defined, or that much narrower group of pure independents, he's down in the 20s in some of these polls with this group, and that's very, very consistent. So those are just terrible numbers. The other really interesting set of numbers has to do with Charles asks the four way approval question, which is not just do you approve or disapprove, but do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove? If you look at Republican voters since the beginning of this term in Wisconsin, his strong approval among Republican voters in early 2025 was 75%. In Charles's last poll, it was 40%. So that deep well of die hard support that we always think of as being part of the story of Donald Trump has been cut almost in half in his own partisan base over the course of this term. Now he still has approval ratings of around 80% with Republicans, but the intensity of that support is just markedly down. And if we think that is at all A barometer of potential turnout trends in November. That's a troubling sign for the Republican Party in this race.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah, Charles, do you see that in the data? Because I imagine not only are you trying to get a sense of the likely electorate in Wisconsin for this Democratic primary, but in many ways that's the least of your worries. You gotta figure out who's gonna vot in November. What sense are you getting as you try to craft that likely voter screen?
- [46:48]
B
Yeah, I think the frustration with the Trump administration, the negativity towards it that Craig was just talking about, is a big marker because it rallies the Democrats and independents who, as Craig said, are in the 20s or in our national data on some items, have actually dropped into the high teens of approval on particular, you know, Trump approval on particular issues. That's a great motivator. I've joked to Democratic audiences that, you know, they really should hope Trump runs for a third term because he's the biggest turnout mechanism for Democrats that there's ever been, and that will be true this time. But the other side of the coin is demobilizing Republicans. And there, I think Craig's point about the very, the strongly approved Republicans going down so much, that is a big worry. It doesn't mean that those folks are going to cross over and vote for Democrats, but it certainly is an indicator of lower turnout for them. In terms of simple measurement, we ask about attention to politics, we ask how certain you are you're going to vote, we ask how enthusiastic you are about voting, and then we toss into the mix standard demographic predictors of turnout, of which age is the most important, but education is also pretty important.
- [48:13]
A
Are you seeing any significant differences between how I, I mean, it's an interesting question because if Wisconsin is routinely the closest or amongst the closest states in the country, is it when you look at your national polling and you look at your Wisconsin polling, are you seeing roughly the same thing? Is it as goes Wisconsin, goes the nation, or are there some sort of specific areas where the two diverge?
- [48:40]
B
It's generally pretty similar, as I said, precisely because we are a middle state, a most competitive state. That's one of the reasons Trump's approval is a couple of points higher here than it is nationally, where, you know, numbers from California and New York, for example, pull down his overall average a little bit compared to us. But for the most part, we mirror the country pretty well. The exception we've already mentioned, and that's working class voters here, non college whites, for example, who are not as Republican as they are in some of the national data. Oh, and we do have that very high turnout rate here. I should have mentioned that because we're routinely the number one, two or three turnout state in the country, vying with Minnesota and usually New Hampshire for which one is the highest turnout state. So that does matter in the sense that a low turnout election here would be a very high turnout election in a lot of states.
- [49:46]
A
That comment about coming back to non college educated white voters voting Democratic at higher rates in Wisconsin than elsewhere, Craig, would you chalk up Wisconsin Democrats strength in that part of the electorate as having something to do with Wisconsin politics and how Democrats run or something that is unique to working class whites in the state?
- [50:10]
C
Yeah, I think of it as being more kind of embedded in the state's culture and its history. Again, this group has been eroding for Democrats over time. I mean, one of the crazy things about the Wisconsin political story is that vast changes in voting patterns in the political coalitions, the party coalitions, and during this whole period when this has all happened, Wisconsin has just stayed on the 50 yard line. If you look at the political map in Wisconsin, it's very different than it was 20 or 30 years ago. The rural areas have gotten redder. The suburban areas, which were really kind of almost freakishly Republican around Milwaukee compared to other northern states have gotten less Republican. So these two things that used to be great markers and the thing set Wisconsin apart from the rest of the country, which was how purple and blue some of the rural areas were and how red some of the suburban areas were, are both less true today than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But it's all sort of netted out so that neither party has really come out on top of all these changes. I mean you sort of add to that in statewide elections the Dane county factor, which is, you know, we've talked about with respect to Fran Hang, this is also relevant to the primary because it is by far the fastest growing part of the state and it is blue as it could possibly be. So that has helped keep Wisconsin competitive in statewide elections and it's also probably, you know, going to help Fran Hong on Tuesday.
- [51:48]
A
Yeah, you mentioning the shifts in Wisconsin remind me of I was up in Ozaukee county ahead of it was the first Republican presidential primary debate in 2024. That was in Milwaukee. I was up in Ozarki, which for folks who are uninitiated, who live normal lives, who just don't think about the counties in suburban Milwaukee from an electoral perspective constantly. But these are the wow. Counties waukesha Ozaukee and Washington counties. Ozaki is the second. Has the second highest level of educational attainment in the state, second to Dane county, but comes from a very different perspective. Is more like country club Republican vibes, but has pushed left in the Trump era and is now like, you know, this is just man on the street type stuff. But I was talking to, you know, you can just, you can just hop out of a car on any main street in Ozarki county and find a former Republican who's like, yeah, I would have voted for Nikki Haley, but increasingly like, looks like I might be voting for the Democrat or not voting at all. What is it now? Now, it used to be all politics is local, now all politics is national. It just seems like these national trends, once upon a time in the 2010s, Wisconsin foreshadowed the national trends, and now sort of the loop has come back to sort of cycle through Wisconsin again, and the national trends have become local. As we close out here, any closing thoughts on this primary or things to watch in Wisconsin heading and heading into
- [53:18]
B
the fall, I would just add how much Madison and Dane county and Milwaukee county do dominate the Democratic primary. Those two together are likely to make up nearly 40% of the statewide Democratic primary vote. Their impact is less when we get to the fall election, but that is certainly a strong base for Francesca Hong. She's even doing quite well in Milwaukee county, where David Crowley is the elected county executive. But it means that her strength in those areas is particularly notable, though she's also led in our polling in other regions of the state as well. So it's a broad support for her, but her two big bases are indeed the biggest part of the Democratic electorate.
- [54:10]
C
I would just say, looking ahead to November, if Hong is the nominee, this is going to be probably the starkest political contrast, starkest political choice for governor in the lifetime of most Wisconsinites. And the one reason it's tricky to handicap is that both sides are carrying into this race, you know, potentially massive electoral liabilities we've talked about. On the Republican side, you know, Trump's drag on Republican candidates. And, you know, Tom, Tiffany is not a Republican candidate out of central casting in this race. It's rare to have a candidate from up north. He's old compared to a lot of candidates. He's very conservative. And then on the Democratic side, we've talked about Fran Hong being unusually young. She's a woman, she's from Madison, and she's a Democratic socialist. So, you know, which of these, you know, whose weaknesses are gonna turn out to be weaker in November in this particular environment that we're in.
- [55:10]
B
I just toss in there that 33% of Wisconsin voters call themselves moderates. And so that's a third of the electorate that's likely to look to their left and see a candidate far away and look to their right and see a candidate who's far away. Will these pressures push either of these candidates to find strategies to speak to those more moderate voters while keeping their strong ideological base in line?
- [55:38]
A
Well, I'm going to have to get you guys to commit to run this back in the fall so we can talk about how that exact dynamic is playing out. Quick question, though. Has anyone looked at the far right and far left and said maybe I should run an independent candidacy for governor? Like, there's never been a wider hallway to walk down between left and right.
- [56:01]
B
Everybody imagines it and few pull it off.
- [56:04]
C
I mean, it's happened before, at least on a limited level, where there have been independent candidates that have gotten some traction. It's funny that it hasn't happened this time around. And I think that probably goes to the polarization, the high stakes. I mean, the stakes are so high in Wisconsin, and people understand that. And so they understand, even the voters, even these moderate voters understand that, you know, do they want to vote for a spoiler, you know, independent candidate, or do they want to vote, do they want to have a say in the outcome?
- [56:33]
A
Yeah. And we should mention here that at stake this fall is potentially full control of state government for the first time in a very long time in Wisconsin. So like I said, we'll have to have both of you back on to talk about how it's looking heading into November. But that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining me, Charles and Craig.
- [56:53]
C
Absolutely, thank you.
- [56:55]
A
My name is Galen Droock. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcast, Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes. You can also join in our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. And you ensure that we can can keep making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor. Also, be a friend of the pod and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.