The state of the race for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin

Our latest Marquette Poll Breakdown features a deep dive on the race between Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde.

The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here.

Tammy Baldwin leads Eric Hovde in the race for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin. Getty Images.

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On to the breakdown…

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The Marquette University Law School Poll is the gold standard of measuring public opinion in Wisconsin, so here at The Recombobulation Area, we take a close look at each new poll. See all of our previous breakdowns here.

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The latest Marquette University Law School Poll was released last Wednesday afternoon. The presidential debate was Thursday evening. Perhaps it’s just part of being in the wake of that unequivocal disaster of a debate performance from President Joe Biden, but it seems like these results might not be quite as meaningful as they initially seemed.

We already knew the race was going to be a toss-up in Wisconsin, and that’s what the results were showing — a 50-50 race among registered voters, and a very slight 51%-49% lead for Biden among likely voters. The intrigue was always going to be in the crosstabs and in the minutiae of the results, and the analysis of that is what we aim to bring here at The Recombobulation Area, as we’ve broken down every iteration of new poll results dating back to August of 2019. 

But given all the uncertainty that Biden’s debate performance has ushered in — and hoo boy, is there some uncertainty — it doesn’t seem especially useful to take a deep dive on these pre-debate numbers. 

One, though, does stand out. On the question of what “describes” each candidate, 76% said “too old to be president” is something that describes Joe Biden. That’s not 76% of just Republican voters, that’s 76% of all Wisconsin registered voters. 

Again, these are from results posted one day before the debate. That number on Biden’s age was the biggest red flag among the president’s poll numbers, and not only did he not address this glaring concern, those concerns have clearly escalated. Perhaps, if nothing else, Biden’s debate performance made what was already a glaring issue into the central issue of his entire presidential campaign. There’s no running from this now, that’s abundantly clear. 

So, for this edition of our Marquette University Law School Poll breakdown, we’re going to take a closer look at the race for U.S. Senate between Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde. 

Eric Hovde officially joined the race for U.S. Senate in late February. Though several other names will join him on the ballot for the primary in August, he is not facing any serious challenge for the nomination, accelerating the track to the Hovde-Baldwin head-to-head race. 

The Marquette University Law School Poll has included this polling in each of the two polls released since Hovde launched his campaign. So first, let’s take a closer look at where things stand in that race.

Marquette has included two different sets of numbers in its polling on this head-to-head matchup, including an “unleaned” set of numbers, which includes significant levels of undecided voters, and a “leaned” result (see image above), which asks those responding to the poll if they “had to choose” who they would vote for. 

In both April and June polls, the “leaned” result among registered voters was the same — Baldwin up 52% to 47%. The “unleaned” polls were also remarkably similar, with the most recent poll showing 45% for Baldwin, 38% for Hovde, and 17% undecided (all numbers that are within 1% of the April poll results).