by Baylor Spears, Wisconsin Examiner
October 30, 2024
The latest Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday found that the race between Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump remains extremely close in Wisconsin.
Harris received 50% of support among likely voters, while Trump received 49%. The previous Marquette poll, conducted in late September, found that Harris received 52% of support and Trump received 48% among likely voters.
The poll, which was conducted between Oct. 16 and 24, surveyed 834 Wisconsin registered voters of whom 753 are considered likely to vote based on 2016 voting records.
“The race has tightened a little bit,” Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School poll, said in a public forum where he presented the poll results Wednesday.
When third party candidates including Robert F. Kennedy and Jill Stein were included in the poll, Harris received 46% of support while Trump received 44% of support. Franklin said voters who are undecided and leaning toward voting for a third-party contribute to the uncertainty in this election.
“They could so easily tip the scales one way or the other,” Franklin said. “If I haven’t made it clear by now, it should not surprise anyone if Donald Trump wins, and it should not surprise anyone if Kamala Harris wins. The polling averages for the state… are just so close that polling is not going to help us at all to have confidence in who is the likely winner.”
The poll also found a large gender gap among voters with men favoring Trump 56% to 44% and women favoring Harris 57% to 43%.
Enthusiasm is also high with 66% of those polled saying they are very enthusiastic. Democrats had a slight enthusiasm advantage with 75% of Democrats saying they are “very enthusiastic” to vote compared with 66% of Republicans.
In the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is running for her third term in office, polls slightly ahead of Republican Eric Hovde, a banker from California.
Among likely voters Baldwin received 51% of support while Hovde received 49%. The results are a big change from the last poll in September, which found that Baldwin had a lead of 7 percentage points over Hovde.
Baldwin was seen favorably by 45% of poll respondents, while her unfavorable rating was 50%; 5% said they haven’t heard enough to form an opinion. Hovde was seen as favorable by 36% and unfavorable by 48% of those polled, with 15% saying they haven’t heard enough.
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