Pollster and political scientist Ken Goldstein says Joe Biden’s steady lead over President Trump in Marquette University Law School polls over the last five months is “stunning” given the number of potentially game-changing events that have transpired.
But when comparing Marquette Poll Director Charles Franklin’s findings to nationwide polling averages, Goldstein said Biden’s lead is “not surprising.”
“I think this is a race that — if not fully baked, if not already been baked for months — is getting pretty baked,” Goldstein said. “You have a very low number of undecideds, and you have two candidates who people know well. And we’re getting a very stable race even, as you say, there’s so much going on nationally and so much going on in Wisconsin.”
Goldstein is a professor of political science at the University of San Francisco, a role he previously held at UW-Madison where he co-founded and co-directed the Big Ten Battleground Poll. He told the DC Wrap Interview Series the 8 percent of undecided voters in Wisconsin highlighted in Wednesday’s Marquette poll posed far less of a threat to Biden than they did to Hillary Clinton four years ago.
“I think everyone’s so scarred from 2016 that we’re all a little bit afraid to say what’s different about this year,” he said. “And what’s different is Hillary Clinton was under water in terms of her favorability nationally, under water in the state of Wisconsin.
“You have many fewer people this time around who dislike both Trump and Biden, and Biden’s actually net favorable.”
