Republicans hope to make Wisconsin a battleground state for the 2016 presidential election, but fret about the possibility of losing a crucial U.S. Senate seat next year. A Marquette University Law School poll released on Thursday shows incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson’s deficit in the polls to former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Democratic challenger, has narrowed.
Feingold led Johnson by 16 percentage points in April, but his lead has shrunk to five percentage points in August. Johnson defeated Feingold in the 2010 election that swept in several Republican lawmakers on the backs of the Tea Party movement.
Wisconsin is just one of multiple midwestern states, including Ohio and Illinois, where Republican incumbent senators are fighting to hold onto power. The outcome of the senatorial campaigns in the Midwest could shift the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Wisconsin has gone blue for Democrats in every presidential election since the 1980s, which makes Johnson’s re-election campaign all the more difficult in 2016, a presidential election year.
While the new poll showed welcome news for Johnson, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential campaign may not find the polling of GOP primary voters too exciting. Support for Walker as the next GOP presidential nominee dropped 15 percentage points in Wisconsin since April, but he remains the front-runner in his home state. Walker now receives the support of 25 percent of those surveyed, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson finishes in second place at 13 percentage points, and Donald Trump is in third place at nine percentage points.
In a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Democratic front-running presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Walker trails her by 10 percentage points, 52 to 42. The GOP candidate that performs best against Clinton among cheese heads is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, losing by five percentage points, 47 to 42.
In his home state of Florida, Bush finishes second among GOP presidential contenders — behind Trump — but manages to defeat Clinton by 11 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup posed by a Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday.
Walker meanwhile appears to have problems of his own at home. Approximately 39 percent of those surveyed approve of Walker’s job performance, while 57 percent disapproved. The deficit in Walker’s approval ratings in April was three percentage points better for Walker than in the August poll. A majority of respondents of his home state do not approve of Walker’s decision to run for president, according to Marquette’s poll, but 60 percent of those surveyed said “able to get things done” describes the Wisconsinite with his eyes on the White House.
