As we inch closer to the often quipped "only poll that matters," Election Day, the Marquette University Law School's final survey was released this week, as well as several internal Democratic campaign polls.
In the "Polling Wrap-Up" and PowerPoint presentation linked below, I summarize all six surveys from Marquette as it relates to Governor Walker's favorability, job approval, Mayor Barrett's favorability and the head to head ballot match-up between Walker and Barrett, as well as the Daily Kos's three polls, the Democratic internal polls and all the polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics.com and the HuffpostPollster website.
Marquette University Law School Poll:
Marquette has released six complete surveys this year looking at all of the 2012 elections, but largely focused on the upcoming gubernatorial recall.
Walker Favorability:
- In January, Gov. Walker started out with a +5% net favorability, but very divided. Between February and April his favorability dipped and plateaued and then leveled out again in the two May polls at a net +5%.
Job Approval:
- Gov. Walker's job approval has tracked pretty close to his personal favorability, starting out positive early in the year, dipping in March and April and leveling out at a net positive 6%, although again divided, in the final May survey.
Barrett Favorability:
- Mayor Barrett started the year and the campaign with a +7% favorability and was not known by a third of the electorate. Since entering the campaign Barrett's favorability has increased by 7% but his unfavorability has increased by 19%, to a net -5% according to the last MU poll.
Head to Head Ballot Test:
- Since the first poll in January, there have been very few undecideds among the electorate in this recall race. In January the undecideds were only 6% and in May they are at 3%. Before Barrett was an announced candidate in January, Walker led Barrett by 6% (50-44) with 6% undecided. The race tightened to 2% in March (47% Walker-45% Barrett) and 1% in April (48% Walker-47% Barrett). The two May polls by MU showed pretty similar #s to one another with Walker leading Barrett 50% to 44% in the 1st survey and 52% to 45% in the second survey. The latter was the first time that Walker broke the 50% mark in the MU surveys.
Below please find a presentation that Marquette's pollster Charles Franklin gives with to Mike Gousha on the latest survey results.
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| Marquette Law School Monthly Poll Series: May 30, 2012 |
Daily Kos/PPP Polling
In addition to Marquette, the only other pollster that had several completely publicly released polls during the gubernatorial campaign was the Progressive Activist website Daily Kos and the polling firm they use Public Policy Polling. They conducted three surveys (February, April and May).
Walker Job Approval:
- In the PPP poll, Gov. Walker's job approval was also nearly equally divided, starting with a net -5% in the February survey, and moving to a +3% in April and +2% in May.
Barrett Favorability:
- In the PPP poll, Mayor Barrett started the year and the campaign with a +8% favorability and was not known by almost 30% of the electorate. Between their February and May poll Barrett's favorability increased only by 2% (41% to 43%) but his unfavorability has increased by 13% (33% to 46%), to a net -3% according to the PPP poll.
Head to Head Ballot Test:
- In the February PPP poll, Barrett led Walker by 3% , 49% to 46%, but then trailed Walker by 5% in April (45% to 50%) and 4% in May (45% to 49%).
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Internal Democratic Polls:
Barrett Campaign
- The Barrett campaign released portions of a second internal poll in as many weeks that showed Gov. Walker at 50% to Mayor Barrett's 48%, the same spread as the previous week. The campaign highlighted however that their findings have Barrett leading Walker 56 percent to 42 percent among those voters surveyed for the poll who did not vote in the 2010 election and 51-47 among those who are familiar with the John Doe probe. Barrett Poll Memo
Greater Wisconsin Political Fund
- The liberal-leaning Greater Wisconsin Political fund released portions of their poll, right in advance of the MU poll release, that found Mayor Barrett and Governor Walker tied at 49%. In their polling memo GWPF stated that Barrett led among Independents 49% to 44%. GWPF Memo
Sifting through all the data
Polls are snapshots in time and based on several variables, that in this election, because of its uniqueness and lack of precedent in the state, are pretty difficult to nail down. There are two popular websites that aggregate polling data that identify trends among the data that's released;
RealClearPolitics.com and the
HuffingtonPost-Pollster.com sites.
RealClearPolitics.com
RCP takes a simple average of the completely released public opinions over a period of time. For the Wisconsin recall race they have taken the average of 5 polls that have been released between May 9th and May 26th and have an RCP average of Walker receiving 51% to Barrett receiving 44.4%.
HuffPost-Pollster.com
HuffPost Pollster uses a more sophisticated approach to estimate support for a candidate called "trend estimates," which they define as a "smoothed estimate of support as of the most recent poll based on local regression, a statistical procedure that creates a smoothed line when data points are scattered." The goal of this is to smooth out the differences between polls taken by different polling firms with differences in methodology, etc...
Looking at the WI recall race, Pollster does an analysis with the internal Democratic polls (DGA, Barrett, Greater Wisconsin) included in the mix of polls released and without them in the mix.
With the Democratic internal polls included Pollster has Gov. Walker leading Mayor Barrett by less than 1% point (49.0 to 48.2) and shows a trend towards Barrett. Without the Democratic polls included the trend remains flat and the spread between Walker and Barrett is very similar to the Marquette poll with Walker at 51.9% to Barrett's 44%.
Below is a PowerPoint with all of the above information graphically illustrated.
