Depending on what poll you are looking at, either Governor Scott Walker has a commanding 7 point lead over Tom Barrett less than a week before the election, or the race is a dead heat.
A Marquette University Law Poll conducting by UW Professor Charles Franklin has Walker with a 52-45 lead.
A poll by the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund has the two men tied at 49-percent.
Democrats have been attacking Franklin’s poll as being biased towards conservatives, and the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund is a liberal group.
The results from Franklin are new, because it’s the first time a mainstream poll has shown Walker above the 50% threshold. Each poll says they have a margin of error of about 4%, and was conducted by phone with about 600 likely voters.
I don’t completely trust polls, because groups with an agenda can influence the results with slanted questions. I also know pollsters are still working on the cell phone issue. Like many younger voters, I do not have a home phone. I haven’t since I left college. This has been the first election cycle where I have received political phone calls on my cell phone. A couple were push polls, a few others were real polls looking for my opinion. As a journalist I don’t respond to polls. I’m sure a lot of other likely voters don’t respond to polls either, due to annoyance or due to worries about cell phone minutes.
I know a lot of people just want this recall race to be over. They made up their minds months ago and just want to move on with their lives. Soon enough. And then it will be on to the U.S. Senate race and the Presidential election this fall.
Update: Tom Barrett’s campaign released a statement this afternoon attacking the accuracy of the Marquette poll. “Over the past five days, a series of polls have been released to the public on the campaign for Wisconsin governor. Most of them show the race either tied or separated by just a couple of points. This includes a poll released today that shows the race in a dead heat, 49%-49%. Only the MU poll is an outlier. The MU poll predicts the electorate to resemble 2010, which is reflected by its undersampling of younger voters, and an oversampling of some of the reddest counties in the state. Yet given the high enthusiasm on both sides, not just on one as was the case in 2010, this expectation is not credible.”
Charles Franklin is a national expert in polling. But as we’ve seen with the economy national experts still can be wrong. I don’t have the math expertise to analyze polling methodology. Few people do. So on the one hand I have the results of a poll conducted by a national expert. On the other hand I have what appears to be valid criticism of the methodology. I don’t know how much faith I have in any of the numbers.
So why does it matter? Polling in and of itself does not win elections. But this recall election is about energy, momentum and enthusiasm. Most of the electorate has already decided on the issues. The only question is whether they will actually bother to vote. Turnout is key, and with voters already suffering election fatigue, a poll that shows the race is a blowout could be enough to convince some voters it’s not worth their time.
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