The first Marquette University Law School poll of the gubernatorial general election shows Republican Tom Tiffany trailing by five points to David Crowley among likely voters, but tied among registered voters. What could possibly for such a big discrepancy?
A big gap in voter enthusiasm, perhaps. Or maybe the poll’s longstanding inability to accurately survey rural and exurban voters; Tiffany’s largest base of support by far. Paul director Charles Franklin has admitted this weakness for years.
“Trump’s two elections were our biggest failures,” Franklin said. “It turned out that pro-Trump voters, many of them blue-collar and rural, responded to surveys at lower rates than other voters, possibly out of mistrust.”
Trump’s first election in 2016 was the biggest miss in the poll’s history, as the August survey showed Hillary Clinton trouncing him by more than nine points. He Incumbent Democrat Senator Russ Feingold was similarly projected to beat GOP challenger Ron Johnson by nine, but both he and Clinton both lost that November.
Four years later, the August poll recorded a smaller but still significant five-point miss, again undercounting Trump’s support by a wide margin.
“One of the big things about this is we missed [Trump voters], despite looking for them,” Franklin said following a second straight polling miss in 2020. “They are a part of the public who over the last eight to 12 years have become very distrustful of government, public affairs, including polling, and it has affected the outcome.”
Four years later, the first poll of the U.S. Senate general election had Democrat Mandela Barnes up seven points on Johnson. He went on to lose by a point.
It’s no coincidence that Trump and Johnson are the two most popular Republicans in heavily rural northern and western counties and also the two most undercounted in the earliest Marquette polls. As Franklin himself said multiple times, he simply cannot reach the voters who are pushing Republicans over the finish line in races they are expected to lose handily.
Tom Tiffany, who represents northern Wisconsin in Congress, is almost certainly experiencing the same phenomenon in the first Marquette poll of this cycle. Independents in that poll break so heavily for Crowley (55%-16%) that it is almost comical given the fact that he and Tiffany are tied among registered voters. This massive discrepancy is almost certainly the result of very, very few of those “independents” residing outside of the areas outside of Wisconsin’s major cities. If a poll’s weighting does not properly account for geographic disaprities as well as party affiliation, then it will fail to capture a candidate’s true support early in a race.
Marquette has continually failed to capture the support for Trump and his perceived closest ally in Wisconsin, Johnson, and there is no real reason to believe it did a better job of polling Tiffany’s base of support. Given that, Tiffany trailing by just five points among likely voters in this week’s poll should be seen as something of a victory.
However, for him to achieve actual victory in November, those rural supporters–who are as notoriously difficult to vote in elections that do not feature Trump as they are to poll–must turn out in huge numbers. The enthusiasm gap is real, and Democrat voters are chomping at the bit to vote against Trump and anyone associated with him.
If Republicans don’t match that and mobilize the rural areas who can and do routinely turn elections toward GOP candidates, then it won’t matter what a poll showed in August: The only poll that matters will be lost.
