Jay Weber Show transcript 8-18-22 7:10am
So, the first Marquette poll taken since primary election day is an interesting one.
None of the findings are particularly surprising to me, even if I would have wanted Ron Johnson’s numbers to be closer to Mandela Barnes than they are.
Frankly – I would have expected the numbers to be flipped-with Tim Michels trailing gov Evers by seven points and Ron Johnson only trailing Mandela Barnes by three-
But- these findings still speak to two -winnable races-for the GOP, and I’ll get into ‘why’ here, in a moment.
In short- this fall is going to heavily depend on turnout, and republicans are expected to have more enthusiasm to do so-
But I’d also point out that Charles Franklin, over at Marquette, always starts his polling by fishing in the wider pool of ‘registered voters’ and only tailors his sample down to ‘likely voters’ closer to the election.
The reason for that is-it’s hard enough to get people on the phone who are willing to be respondents to a 10- or 15-min survey...and so...initially, anyone who is registered to vote is good enough. Whittling them down to only people who are telling you that they-will-vote, is harder. More time consuming.
And so- in a fall election that is supposed to see republicans more energized to vote than dems, it matters that this is just ‘registered voters. It also likely means that both Tim Michels and Ron Johnson are in better shape than this poll suggests...
And so- looking at the results thru that prism- it is not Pollyannaish cheerleading to say that- Gov. Evers might already be in trouble.
If he’s only two-point points ahead of a challenger who has come out of nowhere within the last few months....and who has far more ability to impress and move undecided voters over the next few months than Evers does- oof- Evers could be in trouble.
And I think you know what I mean by that: after four years.... Tony Evers is Tony Evers. Whatever people think of him is well ‘baked into the pie’. And so, it is going to be difficult for Evers and his team to move voters by appealing to them by listing ‘Evers positives’ or ‘new promises’.
Instead, they are going to have to attack Tim Michels-hard-and try to define him as unsuitable for an office that Tony Evers has, frankly, sucked at.
The way I read these numbers-Evers’ message is going to have to be: yeah, I kind of suck at this job, but I’ve tried to do the right thing...and you don’t want to take a chance on this radical, extreme Michaels guy.
And we are seeing it in the first tv ads produced for Evers’ general election campaign. We played a few yesterday. It’s a series of ‘did you know?’ ads...that intentionally smear and distort Tim Michels.
Did you know that Tim Michels once punched a baby....and then they take a piece of generic audit from Michels out of context ‘the kid had it coming’...
What. A monster. This is the tone of Evers’ -first ads!
Did you know that Tim Michels once stole an old woman’s walker?
He came out of nowhere...it was...terrible...
This is politics 101, folks: if you cannot ‘grow’ your level of support, you must tear down your opponent’s level of support.
Tony Evers has been governor for nearly four years now and is only showing a 43 to 45 percent level of support in these mu polls taken recently.... and....
And...in this one...franklin notes the small number of so-called ‘undecideds. It means there isn’t much room for Evers to grow or draw in new supporters.
He and the democrats will-have to go-relentlessly negative on Tim Michels. And that can, and does, work. It’ll be up to Michels’ team to answer back and point out how ridiculous and desperate tony Evers’ ads are.... because he’s scared to lose a job that he stinks at.
Evers will have to desperately attack Michels with tales of extremism.
But here’s the problem with that approach: Tim Michels doesn’t come off as an extremist.
His primary campaign was as successful as it was-in part-because he comes off as such a regular guy. We’ve already been told that Evers’ team was quietly jealous of the ‘red pickup’ ads that had Michaels in rolled up sleeves behind the wheel, talking directly to camera.
They know those are effective-and effective with people in the demos that Evers needs: regular working people, union workers, factory workers, construction guys. Even suburban moms can appreciate that approach.
And you can’t say that most voters in fall-haven’t seen those ads. They were-everywhere- across the states-and running for weeks during the primary.
Franklin’s poll confirms that ¾ of the voters who were surveyed already had an opinion on Michel’s....suggesting that this is already an image of Michels that has been baked in-with at least some segment of Wisconsin’s voters.
It’s what had Michels winning the primary so easily, and even taking some of the counties he wasn’t expected to win- like Racine, Kenosha, rock and Washington counties.
These are counties full of ‘regular ole working folks’ and he appealed to them in a significant way. And in a way that Tony Evers-as a lifelong govt bureaucrat-does not.
And so- so long as Tim Michels and his team are prepared to answer back with a strong campaign that defines Evers as the ‘grey’ failure that he is...as well as answer the smear attacks with effective ads that sort of ‘roll their eyes’ at Evers’ alarmism.... Tim Michels is in a strong position here, as a challenger.
If you remember, the last poll had Evers at 48 percent and Michaels at 41. This one has Evers losing ground and Michels gaining some.
And unlike the Kleefisch campaign-he’s already well-funded and running those ads that he hopes will remind voters of what a clunker Tony Evers has been-as governor.
In fact, one of Marquette’s findings is that Michael is already gaining ground with the sort of independent voters who will be needed to win this election....and then you look at the ‘most important issues’ again:
A sitting governor is never easy to beat, and i have maintained all along here-that Tony Evers won’t be easy to unseat. Especially given all of the national and third-party money that will be poured into this race.
Wisconsin is-really-on the national radar this year, for a few reasons. It’s not just the tight Ron Johnson race. It’s also because republicans have such a strong hold on the legislature, and Tony Evers is one of the democrat governors who his party leaders are hoping, hoping, hoping, can remain in power as a blocker to the conservative agenda.
Just this week, the NY Times wrote a story meant to alarm the leftists: my God, if Wisconsin republicans can beat Tony Evers, and then win the race to replace Pat Roggensack on the State Supreme court next spring.... they will hold ‘all of the power’ in the state of Wisconsin.
Yes. We will. And it’s why every conservative, republican, and ‘leaner’ in this audience needs to get focused. Man up. Put the pettier squabbles or parochial interests aside-and focus on fall.
The stakes here-are significant. Both in returning a republican to the governor’s chair so we can resume an era of republican reforms...
And in sending Ron Johnson back to Washington for a third term- to help republicans take control of the u-s senate....and ensure the current control of DC, and the agenda, changes.
I’ve run out of time to analyze the Johnson/Barnes race, based on this Marquette poll. I’ll start the next segment with that...
But....on the governor’s findings:
I don’t want to jinx anything-and it’s still very early in this head-to-head race, but the Michels campaign should be feeling pretty good about where they are sitting as these kicks off-
It’s a better position that democrats and most pundits would have expected...
And... trust me... The Evers campaign and the party leaders didn’t cheer these results when they came out, yesterday.
7:44am....(SEGMENT 2)
In the last segment-I analyzed the first poll numbers on the governor’s race Evers v. Michel’s-head-to-head- to come from Charles Franklins’ Marquette university poll.
This segment-I wants to walk thru the numbers on the senate head-to-head: Ron Johnson versus Mandela Barnes-
And if the numbers on the governor’s race indicate that Tim Michels is in a strong position as an outside challenger to Governor Evers...the numbers in the senate race are the opposite.
They are concerning, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But I-am-going to give listeners reasons to be hopeful....
Because we are still 3 months away from this election. It’s an election year that is expected to draw out more republicans than democrats-
And maybe most importantly for today’s ‘take’- this is a poll of ‘registered voters.
This is a poll of the most generic sort of pool that the pollsters can go fishing in, other than just – ‘Americans’. ‘people’. Anyone who picks up the phone.
This poll shows Ron Johnson-as a senate incumbent- starting the general election behind his challenger by seven points.
Oof. Not good.
But that doesn’t concern me as much as the fact that senator Johnson’s approval rating is so low-and hasn’t even edged higher since the last poll.
Right now- according to franklin’s findings- only 38 percent of these voters approve of the job Johnson has been doing, with 47 percent disapproving. That’s’ another ‘oof’.
But- do realize that that is-exactly-where Ron Johnson was in his last race against Russ Feingold?
The poll indicates that Barnes is benefitting from slightly more cross-over voting from republicans than gov Evers is...which would mean there are some republican voters who are falling for this two-year leftist campaign to smear Johnson and soften him up before the election.
I hope those people realize what is a stake by the time fall comes around and realize what a radical dud Mandela Barnes really is.
This wouldn’t just be sending another ‘Tammy Baldwin’ to Washington DC. She looks moderate, by comparison.
And this is one of the reasons to be optimistic about Ron Johnson’s re-election chances: his challenger hasn’t been introduced to most voters yet.
And unlike the falsehoods, exaggerations, and smears that the left has engaged in, related to Johnson, over the last few years, the senator’s campaign and his republican allies don’t even need to lie about Barnes’ record.
There are a lot of things about Barnes that we might have talked about over the years, but that aren’t known to the voting public, yet. Such as-how extreme his positions really are.
Or how the party cleared the field for a man who is being endorsed by Bernie sanders, AOC, and Liz Warren-three of the most extreme ‘big govt’ socialists in the country. He has praised Ilhan Omar and other members of the socialist squad, and has suggested a strong kinship with them, over these last four years.
Most voters don’t know that Barnes was in favor of open borders and abolishing ice-before he recently pivoted and pretended to be against them. He supported defunding the police, and now pretends otherwise. He took taxpayer help in the form of badger care coverage, at the same he was buying two condos, he was so flush with cash.
He doesn’t have nearly the track record of success or private sector experience that Ron Johnson has. Ron Johnson-thru the joseph project-has put all sorts of inner-city African Americans and minority members ‘back to work’ in good paying jobs while Mandela Barnes and Tony Evers never even -thought- to invest in such direct jobs programs.
Mandela Barnes’ career points to a man who has been out for himself, not the people of Wisconsin.
Heck-he even must resort to lying in his first tv ad...
Greg...do we still have the audio on that?
Listen to Mandela Barnes talk about a middle-class tax cut in this ad-when he and GOV Evers proposed two budgets that would have raised taxes a billion dollars...
And when he has expressed support for this ‘inflation explosion act’ that the democrats just shoved thru in dc that every analysis confirms will raise taxes on all Americans- especially-middle class Americans.
Listen to this clown now that he’s in a campaign.
don’t know who that Mandela Barnes is, but the things he says he wants to do-in that ad-don’t match up with what he and Tony Evers have said they want to do- over the last four years.
And so-senator Johnson’s mission is to ‘introduce’ the real Mandela Barnes to the voters of Wisconsin. And the mu numbers show a huge opportunity to define Barnes, because nearly four in ten respondents said they hadn’t heard of him.
That. Might be the most significant finding of the poll: that four in ten voters don’t know who Mandela Barnes is- and yet- some chunk of them chooses him over Ron Johnson. Right?
Sight unseen?
It suggests that they can be lured back-once they learn more about Johnson’s challenger.
In fact, of those who said they had an opinion on Johnson-only 37 percent had a favorable opinion.
Well-that’s right down there with Johnson’s.
And yes, that stings more as an incumbent, but you get my point: there appears to be a lot of room to change perceptions in this race between now and November.
And then, of course, the race will come down to ‘turnout’ and ‘issues and republicans and Johnson should have the advantage, there.
The respondents name, inflation, crime, and gun violence as top worries. Abortion registers-but much lower-
So, these findings still speak to two -winnable races-for the GOP. But it won’t be easy, and our candidates start out behind in both.
Then there’s the challenge of all the national and third-party money that will be poured into this race from the left.
It’ll come in from both sides-but democrats always, always, always have the money advantage, and Wisconsin is-really-on the national radar this year, and due to both races.
Tony Evers is one of the democrat governors who his party leaders are insisting needs to remain in power if they lose other state houses around the country....and the Johnson race is ‘all about’ which side wins control of the u-s senate for the next two years-and hopefully-the remaining time that Joe Biden is in office.
The stakes are significant.
photo credit: Getty Images
story credit: NEW MARQUETTE LAW SCHOOL WISCONSIN SURVEY