Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s slide in his home state continues, even after he decided to exit the presidential race.
Walker’s freefall in national polls helped end his presidential campaign and his hopes for holding higher office, but he may not yet have hit rock bottom. The governor appears to have more work to do to repair his damaged image at home.
A new Marquette University Law School poll found more than 60 percent of respondents do not want Walker to run for a third term as governor. Walker, first elected in 2010, won three gubernatorial elections in his first four years in office, a talking point that became a hallmark of his failed presidential campaign. Approximately 15 percent of independents with “no party leaning” support another re-election bid from Walker.
His underwater approval rating has continued to sink: approximately 59.2 percent of repondents to the poll said they disapprove of the job Walker has done as governor, while 37 percent of respondents said they approved. And more than 60 percent of those surveyed said they did not believe Walker “cares about people like me.”
If Walker had not exited the race, fewer than 13 percent of Wisconsinites surveyed said they would have supported him, while more than 28 percent of respondents would have voted for a different Republican presidential candidate. Approximately 38.5 percent of those surveyed said they would have voted in the Democratic primary.
Following Walker’s departure, Donald Trump led the GOP presidential candidates in polling of Wisconsin with the support of 20 percent of those surveyed, while Ben Carson finished second at 16 percentage points. Florida Senator Marco Rubio placed third at 14 percentage points and Carly Fiorina finished in fourth at 11 points. While Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defeated all Republicans pitted against her in hypothetical head-to-head matchups, Rubio came closest to defeating Clinton among the Republicans tested.
Marquette’s poll surveyed 803 Wisconsinites with a 4.1 percentage point margin of error. The margin of error increased to 6.5 percentage points for the Republican presidential primary sample size.
