Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has cut former Sen. Russ Feingold’s lead in the Wisconsin Senate race from double digits to 5 points in a month, but polls suggest he’s still not a threat to catch his challenger.
Last Tuesday’s GOP presidential primary awoke partisan voters, and Johnson has also benefited from his hardline stances on terrorism and President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination.
These and a natural tightening of the race have eroded the lopsided 49-37 lead Feingold enjoyed throughout 2015 and up until February, says Charles Franklin, Marquette University’s polling director. Feingold’s lead fell to 47-42 among registered voters in the Marquette poll released March 30.
Franklin won’t say Marquette’s results for March are the new norm, and he notes that Johnson enjoyed a similar spike last summer. But as voters truly tune into election politics, the gap was bound to narrow, he says.
Both candidates say the latest poll reflects the tight race they always expected.
The Marquette poll results “confirm what we’ve always known: This is going to be a tough, close race and grassroots supporters like you are going to make the difference for our campaign,” read a Feingold fundraising letter issued the day the Marquette poll came out.
Johnson campaign spokesman Brian Reisinger said: “This is going to be a close race all the way to November and everyone knows it.”
Conservatives who had toyed with the idea of voting for Feingold returned to the Republican fold after Obama named Judge Merrick Garland to replace the-late Justice Antonin Scalia, and Senate Republicans’ refused to hold hearings. The national attention given to the primary and, ironically, Feingold’s focus on GOP intransigence, also brought Republicans home to their party.
But polarization and the “virtual elimination of crossover voting” in Wisconsin benefited Feingold, Franklin said.
Johnson’s campaign believes strong voter turnout in Republican presidential primaries shows that GOP voters are more motivated than Democrats, and has also helped identify a new breed of swing voters.
A Johnson aide reportedly said the campaign will target supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whom they believe might accept the idea that Johnson is the outsider in the Senate race.
“Sen. Feingold was fired by the people of Wisconsin once, and they know that he’s a career politician who will not change anything in Washington,” Reisinger said, referring to Johnson’s 2010 victory over Feingold. “Ron is going to win this race because he is a hardworking manufacturer who knows how to create jobs, and is tough enough to keep us safe and shake things up in Washington.”
Franklin said he doubts Wisconsin voters will be willing to ticket-split, and he has seen no polling data to suggest he’s wrong. But Johnson’s campaign might have down-ballot data that doesn’t show up at the presidential level, he conceded.
Approximately 100,000 more voters participated in Tuesday’s Republican primary than did in the Democratic contest, Republicans boast.
“From my standpoint, what the primary shows is that the Republican base is energized,” Johnson told CNN on Wednesday. “We’re activated. And we’re going to be coming out, I think, in droves in November.”
Nationally, vulnerable Senate Republicans are avoiding embracing Donald Trump for fear he could hurt them in November.
Johnson has followed suit, but also says Trump’s apparent strength in northern Wisconsin could bolster his own campaign. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is highlighting a new poll from Public Policy Polling, a respected Democratic firm, showing that backing Trump hurts GOP Senate candidates by a wide margin.
The poll said 46 percent of voters said Trump would make them less likely to vote for the Republican candidate, whereas 23 percent said it would make them more likely to do so.
Feingold is hammering Johnson for saying he will stump with whomever the nominee is, including Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the primary.
“We talk about Donald Trump, but can you imagine Ted Cruz in the Oval Office?” said a Feingold campaign email sent Thursday. “But here’s our reality: We have our own Ted Cruz right here in Wisconsin with Sen. Ron Johnson. And we have an opportunity, right now, to defeat Sen. Johnson and his Cruz-style politics.”
