Baldwin leads Thompson by 4

-PPP's newest poll of the Wisconsin Senate race finds Tammy Baldwin leading Tommy Thompson by a 49-45 margin. That represents a nine point reversal from a month ago when Thompson led 49-44.

Baldwin's image has improved a little bit in the last month with her favorability rating improving from 40% to 44%. Her unfavorable number has remained steady at 45%. But the bigger reason for the shift is that Thompson's image has taken a major hit. Last month he had a net +3 favorability rating with 46% of voters rating him positively to 43% with a negative opinion. He's dropped a net 11 points since that time and now just 42% see him positively to 50% with an unfavorable view.

Baldwin's turned a small deficit with independents last month (45-42) into a slight advantage with them this month (46-44). And she's more than doubled her share of the Republican vote from 4% to 10%.

By a 47/43 margin voters say they want Democrats to have control of the US Senate and the actual Baldwin/Thompson numbers are tracking that pretty closely.

-Things are increasingly looking bad for Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, but Scott Walker just continues to roll along. He has a 50/46 approval rating and leads a generic Democratic opponent for reelection by a 50/44 margin, numbers very similar to what happened in June's recall election. The problems other key Republicans are having in the state aren't rubbing off on Walker. Wisconsin voters continue to be very closely divided at the state level- 46% say they plan to vote for Democratic legislative candidates this fall to 44% who prefer Republicans.

-Herb Kohl continues to be the state's most popular politician in terms of net approval. 47% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 35% who disapprove. Voters are closely divided on freshman Senator Ron Johnson with 36% giving him good marks to 37% dissatisfied with his performance.

-There's a lot of optimism about the Packers this season among Wisconsin voters. 81% think the team will make the playoffs, 52% think they'll make it to the Super Bowl, and 26% think that they'll win it all. Aaron Rodgers' favorability rating is a crazy good 87/3 spread. That's not quite the 89/4  he had halfway through last season when the team was undefeated but it's close. Mike McCarthy comes in at 75/6.

Wisconsin voters are now evenly divided in their feelings about Brett Favre with 40% rating him favorably and 40% unfavorably. That's actually a huge improvement from 2010 when we asked this question and found him at a 26/55 spread. Favre's image is recovering as things move forward but it's still going to be a while before he regains hero status in the state.

Full results here