A key battleground state is shifting ever so slightly toward President Trump as the House Democrat-led impeachment proceedings play out on screens across the country.
A growing number of registered voters in Wisconsin do not believe Trump should be impeached or forcibly removed from office, according to a poll released on Wednesday by Marquette University Law School. While 40% agreed with House Democrats’ impeachment push against Trump over the Ukraine whistleblower, 53% did not. Those results can be contrasted with a survey put in the field by the law school last month, which found 44% favored impeachment and removal compared to 51% who were against it.
The research, published hours before the fifth Democratic primary debate, also showed the incumbent prevailing in head-to-head matchups with the front-runners for the 2020 presidential nomination.
If the general election were held today, Trump would beat both former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by 3 percentage points, the poll reported. He would also best Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren by 5 percentage points and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg by 8 percentage points, respectively. In comparison, Biden, Sanders, and Warren held small advantages over Trump when the survey was conducted in October, ranging from Biden’s 6 percentage points to Warren’s single percentage point. Buttigieg trailed the president by a smaller margin of 2 percentage points.
Democrats are desperate to rebuild the party’s “blue wall” after Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the 2016 election, costing the party an Electoral College majority. Polling experts suspect Wisconsin, which Hillary Clinton lost by 0.7 percentage points, or a mere 23,000 votes, may prove the most difficult to return to the Democratic Party.
“Have long believed (even aside from this poll) that Wisconsin will be the toughest state for Dems to get back of the MI/PA/WI trio,” Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman tweeted Wednesday.
Have long believed (even aside from this poll) that Wisconsin will be the toughest state for Dems to get back of the MI/PA/WI trio. https://t.co/vmkFOBMFe0
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 20, 2019
Marquette University Law School surveyed 801 registered Wisconsin voters by landline or cellphone between Nov. 13 and17 for the research, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
