Walker leads by 3 points

PPP's final poll on the Wisconsin recall finds Scott Walker ahead, but also a race that's tightening. Walker leads Tom Barrett 50-47. That's down from 50-45 on a PPP poll conducted three weeks ago and it's also down from a 52-45 lead that Walker posted in a Marquette Law poll released last week.

Barrett is actually winning independent voters by a 48-46 margin. The reason he continues to trail overall is that Republicans are more excited about voting in Tuesday's election than Democrats are. Our projected electorate voted for Barack Obama by only 7 points, even though he took the state by 14 in 2008. If the folks who turn out on Tuesday actually matched the 2008 electorate, Barrett would be ahead of Walker by a 50-49 margin. It's cliche but this is a race that really is going to completely come down to turnout.

Walker has a 51/47 approval rating. He's up with men (55-42), whites (52-46), seniors (58-39), and especially voters in the Milwaukee suburbs (70/29).

Barrett has a 46/46 favorability rating, improved from 43/46 on our first poll after the primary. He's winning with women (52/46), minorities (58-36), young voters (53-39), those in Milwaukee County (61-35), and ones in greater Madison (59-37).

This is a close race, closer than it was a couple weeks ago. Scott Walker's still the favorite but Barrett's prospects for an upset look better than they have in a long time.

Full results here

Comments

[Zack Brown]

I noticed you sampled liberals much more this poll (26%) than last poll (17%). I realize demographics change, but this just seems too much of a swing for me to believe it. What gives?

[Chris]

Early voting has been very high in Democratic strongholds like Milwaukee, Madison, and La Crosse, for example. Early voting numbers are already higher compared to 2010 and the GAB is predicting a turnout slightly lower than the 2008 presidential election. These factors already lean in Barrett's favor. Additionally, voter enthusiasm in north Milwaukee and the City of Madison have been dramatically higher than in 2010. This will be extremely close, likely a mirror image of last year's Supreme Court race but with a much higher turnout (once again, higher turnout benefits Democrats.)

[Alfred Lehmberg]

If Scott Walker wins the recall election the wars on individuals, women and the middle class are legitimized and energized! Additionally, it is proving that the well moneyed prerogatives and psychopathic proclivities of the Koch Brothers are enough to provoke working people to vote AGAINST their own best interests and fairness, but FOR the interests and unethical support of the invulnerable and inviolate 1%. Big money needs to lose this race, folks, so they are not encouraged to use _more_ money to further pervert a government already no longer "of," "for" and "by" the people. Please share!

[Cindie White]

Wisconsin progressives, get out the vote!

[Obama 2012]

It's mind blowing to me that Walker has a 51% approval rating considering what he's done as Governor... depressing might be a more apt word.

[Dustin]

First of all, implying that the race has tightened 4 points because this poll shows less support than last weeks Marquette poll is completely disingenuous. The Marquette poll has ALWAYS been discrepant from the PPP polling, at least in part because the methodologies are different. If you're going to compare, you have to do "apples to apples" of trends within the SAME polling method, and if you do that, Walker has shown *NO* erosion of support in the last three weeks. And here is the money quote: "If the folks who turn out on Tuesday actually match[ed] the 2008 electorate, Barrett would be ahead of Walker by a 50-49 margin". In other words, if an unexpectedly high number of Barrett supporters suddenly materialize, he'll win. Thanks for that "insight". It ain't 2008 anymore. The economy is crap, Obama isn't nearly as popular as he was four years ago, and neither is the Democrat party.

[Clark Magnuson]

The betting is 93% chance for Walker this morning on Intrade.

[Mitch]

If the election were really this close, Obama would have made a campaign appearance. I think Walker will win by 6 points, not what you are predicting.

Your is the only poll that shows it this tight. And now you are predicting that the electorate will resemble 2008?

[Vince]

Unfortunately, this appears to be another bizarre PPP sampling when you compare them to the large about of polling data that's out there and been updated frequently.

Of course I could be wrong and will withold final judgement until tomorrow of course, but my overall comments from previously seem to remain (http://tinyurl.com/csmu4qk) due to a maybe a biased weighting or bizarre sampling pattern PPP is using in 2012.

Again, this isn't a general PPP critic; but rather of what I'd imagine has been tweaked or at least iteratively altered a bit since 2008.

We shall see, it'll be fun!

[Blackman38435c]

PPP is a democrat polling company out of NC. Everyone in NC knows how biased toward democrats they are. I'm sure the democrats paid for this poll result to keep their people from getting discouraged.

According to their own polling stats they spoke to more democrats than republicans as can be seen below:

Very liberal ...................................................... 9%
Somewhat liberal ............................................ 17%
Moderate......................................................... 35%
Somewhat conservative.................................. 24%
Very conservative ........................................... 16%

Add up the very liberal, somewhat liberal and moderate which is still considered liberal you have 61% compared to somewhat conservative, very conservative at 40%.

They polled far more liberal democrats than conservatives in order to make the race appear tight.

This is the way the 2012 national presidential polls are being done by the MSM as well. They poll far more democrats than republicans to make their fellow democrats believe
Obama is ahead of Romney in every state.

They are also using the 2008 electoral map to project that Obama will win the 270 electoral votes he needs.

Things have changed and Obama is no longer the "messiah" the MSM created. He has a record now and it's an abysmal failure. True unemployment is around 17 - 22%.
Part time work is all most folks can find and college graduates can find nothing.

All Obama does now is attack Romney (and he is failing at that as well) and blame Bush but Bush isn't running and people are tired of Obama's blame game. He needs to grow up and grow a pair and admit his marxist ideology isn't working. America will not be a socialized country no matter how hard Obama tries.

[Tom Johnson]

I wish you guys at PPP could do simple math sometimes. Sigh. If the electorate this election matched the 2008 numbers, the results would look like this:

2008 Electorate (CNN exit poll)
39% Dem
33% Rep
28 or 29% Ind

That would give Barrett 50% and Walker only 47%.
50.07% to 47.2% to be exact.

[jeannie]

The Democractic Party not popular? That hardly makes the Republican Party more popular. They have betrayed the American Publican by taking money from Oil and Chemical sugar Daddies. They send Boehner, McConnell and Cantor to front for them in D.C. as certifiable betrayers. They have lifted not even a finger to help this economy to get on track, thinking we are dumb enough to reward them for sinking us and favoring only the wealthy. I think the folks in Wisconsin know better than to support that bunch.

[DC]

The question on my mind is Who is running this recall election? Walker's appointed minion is more than likely going to misplace the democratic ballots, throw obstacles in front of the dem voters in short rig the polls, we saw this in Ohio when then sec state Blackburn gave Ohio to Bush.

[DHFabian]

One concern: Historically, when the richest few gained too much power, to the harm of the country, the poor and middle classes united to successfully push back, to the benefit of both. When all of this began in WI, the poor and middle classes united in Madison to put an end to the abuses of power by the Walker admin. But within a short time, and largely because of the media, the poor were made invisible. Since then, the story has been exclusively about middle class workers, the better-off. Now consider that we have already lost roughly 1/3 of the middle class so far. They didn't disappear. They are now the working poor, or far worse off. These people came out in droves to vote for President Obama in the hope that we would begin a legitimate discussion about US poverty, and its impact on all of the working class. That didn't happen. Now Walker is doing to the middle class what Thompson did to the poor, and many of the poor can see no reason to support the middle class any more than the middle class supported the poor. And, after all, it was our middle class workers that elected Walker. "Divide and conquer" seems to have worked very well in WI. I'm not optimistic about the outcome of the recall. But I sure think that we should re-think the way the "masses" - the poor and middle classes - have been so deeply divided.

[Chris]

@Blackman38435c

This is what is wrong with the far right:

"Add up the very liberal, somewhat liberal and moderate which is still considered liberal "

If you've moved so far to the right that moderates are considered liberal, you are getting into dangerously extreme ideology. I'm sure you are to the point that you wouldn't vote for Ronald Reagan now because he would be considered moderate.

[Dustin]

Wow, your polling was WAY off. You might want to consider revising your polling methodology. Maybe you are letting your political views influence your polling. Better keep that in check or you will lose your image as an accurate polling firm.

[realnrh]

Way off? They had Barrett's numbers dead on, and were within the MoE on Walker. That's not way off, that's right down the middle of the fairway.

[Obama 2012]

I think the Republicans are way overplaying their hand on this if they actually think Wisconsin is in play this November because of this result... the exit polling shows that even with Walker winning by 7% those same voters favored Obama by 7% ... in November there will be more pro-Obama voters out so it'll likely be a double digit Obama victory in Wisconsin.

[Obama 2012]

Dustin: "WAY off" because of a 7% victory vs a 3% predicted victory? That's a bit ridiculous isn't it? Especially considering how much harder it must be to predict voter turnout for a recall vs a regular election?

How do you feel about Rasmussen polling? Big fan I bet? They were off by an _average_ of 5% in the 2010 Senate races ... that's over a total of 24 different contests... they were off by an average of 5% (in favor of the Republican candidate) ... in one race (in Hawaii) they were off by a __41__ points. In four races they predicted the wrong candidate to win (all four of them being Republicans.) So... how about that?

[Manu]

White voters are the key in all the elections. For example, if in Wisconsin white folks did it as in Alabama, Romney had no problem , the same in all the rest of the 50 states. Even in CA if the same as 2008. The problem is that national white vote could be 60% as much to Romney in the general election, and in Alabama he could get 90%. The Deep South is like the old America, 50 years ago and the rest of the country is more like Europe socialist and atheist.

[Dustin]

I'm just saying that PPP has been portraying it as a closer race than everyone else the whole time and their polling in other places seems to be more favorable to dems than other firms on average. In most cases if you take PPP and Rasmussen and average their numbers together you get values close to what other polls are predicting. I think both firms are at the political extremes and need to revise their methodologies. I don't see PPP being as accurate this year as they typically have been.

[Obama 2012]

Manu - my hope is that the national numbers are as close as they are because of Romney running up the score with white voters in states that are not at all necessary for Obama to win reelection (like Alabama) meanwhile Obama is winning the swing states and winning usual blue states (although sometimes by smaller margins than 2008... again explaining the closeness of the national numbers while Obama is actually in very good position electorally.)