Unlikely Voter

Since Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Senate had a big uproar over unions of government employees, and that uproar has spread to states like Ohio, there’s been a great deal of issue polling on unions and collective bargaining. I tend to ignore all of it, just as I ignore most issue polling. I’ve gotten comments that this is a failure of the site in fact, that I don’t hit these things more.

I have a standard answer for why I tend to ignore issue polling, though: the results are volatile and easily manipulated, either accidentally or intentionally.

Along with West Virginia, Wisconsin I wanted to see more polling in. Rasmussen Reports has been the lone voice up there polling again and again, showing these key races competitive while the rest of the polling world passed on by.

PPP went there for Daily Kos finally, and now we get that critical second opinion on the races to see if they are as competitive as Rasmussen said.

Daily Kos and Public Policy Polling have hinted on Twitter that they have a new Wisconsin poll coming, which I am glad of because I’ve long wanted to see a second opinion in that state, but I’d like to start the week by hitting a pair of polls I missed while I was in Austin over the weekend: Rasmussen Reports on the Wisconsin Senate race and then and then on the race for Governor.

Even in a wave election, some members of the losing party stand well in their own local elections. However one key trait of a wave election is that the losing party’s base is so discouraged that they fail to show up.

So if this Rasmussen poll is right, I think the nomination of Scott Walker for Governor by Republicans would depress Democrats in Wisconsin, and hurt Senator Russ Feingold’s re-election chances.

I’ve been staring slack-jawed so long at Russ Feingold’s surprising difficulties in Wisconsin, that I completely neglected to see that there’s a close race for Governor going on in that state, too.

Wisconsin has long been the state most friendly to progressives in America. Could Republicans win the top two statewide races there, without the benefit of an anomaly like the Paul Wellstone funeral?