Vice President Harris continues to hold a slight advantage in crucial battleground Wisconsin, according to a new poll released Wednesday, but she and former President Trump remain in a tight battle to claim the Badger State.
Fifty-two percent of likely Wisconsin voters surveyed in the latest Marquette Law School poll said they plan to cast their ballots for Harris, compared to 48 percent for Trump. A similar poll a month ago showed 50 percent of likely voters voiced support for Harris, while Trump polled at 49 percent.
Charles Franklin, director of polling at Marquette Law, said Harris saw a slight bump among likely voters in Wisconsin after the Democratic National Convention last month, even though there wasn’t a noticeable bump in national polls.
“Maybe it’s happening here, but not nationally. … We’re just talking about a couple points up for one and down one for the other,” he said. “Having said all of that, other things you’ll see look like Harris is in a little better shape this time than last time.”
Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ended his presidential campaign last month and endorsed Trump, has unsuccessfully sought to have his name removed from the Wisconsin ballot.
With Kennedy’s name included among the Marquette Law poll’s options after he suspended his campaign, 6 percent of voters surveyed said they would still vote for him. Franklin noted that number was reached despite the “overwhelming majority” (86 percent) of voters surveyed who said they know that Kennedy is no longer running for president.
“It’s not a question of people being misinformed that he’s still in the race and voting for him because they think he’s in the race,” he said. “It certainly looks like the vast majority of people who are still saying they are voting for him are doing that despite knowing that he paused, or suspended, his campaign.”
Both Harris’s and Trump’s campaigns have made major plays for Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes this cycle.
President Biden won Wisconsin with about 49.5 percent of the vote to Trump’s 48.8 percent four years ago, after Trump eked out an unexpected Wisconsin win against then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in 2016.
According to local media reports, Wisconsin has hosted 27 visits from the major candidates on the presidential tickets this year — Harris, Trump, their respective running mates and Biden before he ended his reelection bid in July. Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is scheduled to campaign in Wisconsin again Friday.
Republicans held their nominating convention in Milwaukee in July, and Harris had her first campaign rally there after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.
The Marquette Law poll found a bump in enthusiasm among Wisconsin Democrats over the past month, with more than 90 percent of Democratic voters surveyed saying they were very or somewhat enthusiastic about voting, compared to 81 percent polled at the end of July into early August.
On the Republican side, 82 percent of voters said they are currently enthusiastic about voting, down 4 percentage points from a month ago.
When asked who they think will win the race, regardless of who they are backing, 48 percent of the Wisconsin voters said they think Harris will definitely or probably win, while 41 percent said they think Trump will — essentially a reversal from a month ago, when half of Wisconsin voters surveyed said they believed Trump would win, while just 39 percent said Harris would.
The latest Marquette Law poll was conducted from Aug. 28 to Sept. 5 and included 738 likely voters. It has a margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.
The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling tracker shows Harris with an average 2.7 percentage point lead over Trump in 30 recent polls of Wisconsin before factoring in the Marquette survey’s findings. Forecasters rate the state a toss-up.