Voters are still largely unfamiliar with the candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and state superintendent a month out from the April 1 election, a new Marquette University Law School poll shows.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is slightly underwater with Wisconsin voters after his first month in office — the same spot he was in during almost all of his first term.
Looking at the spring races, 38% of registered voters didn’t have an opinion of Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative running for state Supreme Court who spent four years as attorney general. Fifty-eight percent didn’t have an opinion of his liberal rival, Susan Crawford, who was elected to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2018.
Likewise, 64% didn’t have an opinion of state Superintendent Jill Underly, while 71% said the same of Brittany Kinser, a reading consultant.
Poll Director Charles Franklin said he anticipated voters’ lack of familiarity with the candidates and therefore didn’t ask a head-to-head question in the two races. He said the ads that will run between now and April 1 will likely change that, and “trying to handicap the race this far out with such unawareness isn’t a great idea.”
The favorable-unfavorable splits for the spring candidates were:
- Schimel, 29% favorable, 32% unfavorable
- Crawford, 19-23
- Underly, 16-20
- Kinser, 16-13
Looking at just those who said they are both very enthusiastic about voting and are certain to turn out for the April 1 election — which was about 41% of the sample — the splits were:
- Schimel, 42% favorable, 43% unfavorable, 15% not heard enough or don’t know
- Crawford, 33-32-36
- Underly, 26-28-46
- Kinser, 29-18-53
On issues that could play a role in the spring races:
- 54% want Act 10 struck down, while 42% want the courts to uphold the 2011 law that stripped most public employees of their collective bargaining powers.
- 64% favor abortion being legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in most or all cases.
- 77% favor requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote, while 22% were opposed.
- 58% are either very satisfied or satisfied with their public schools, while 41% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. In recent years, satisfaction has been around 60%.
- 58% say holding down property taxes is more important, while 41% say it’s more important to increase funding for schools.
- 57% favor allowing all students to use vouchers to attend private or religious schools. Meanwhile, 67% would prefer to increase funding for public schools rather than upping spending in the state budget to allow more students to attend private ones.
Forty-eight percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing, while 51% disapproved.
That includes 38% who strongly approve of the job Trump is doing and 45% who strongly disapprove.
The president is a polarizing figure for self-identified partisans, with 92% of Republicans approving of the job he’s doing, while 97% of Dems disapprove.
Meanwhile, he was upside down with independents at 39-60.
Franklin noted Trump’s split was 41-47 with voters overall in March 2017 in the first poll after he took office. He remained in net negative territory for almost all of his first term other than a period during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By late October 2020, his split was 47-52.
Voters don’t care for tariffs, with only 32% believing they will help the economy and 51% saying they will hurt.
But they back deporting immigrants who are here illegally, 61-38. That includes 32% of self-identified Dems.
When the question was changed to ask if they supported deporting those in the U.S. illegally who have jobs and no criminal record, voters were split 50-50.
Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman who has been leading Trump’s effort to slash the federal government, was upside down with 41% having a favorable opinion of him and 53% an unfavorable one. The split for independents was 29-58, while just 1% of Dems had a favorable view of him.
He has played a prominent role in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, with PACs he’s funded running ads and doing GOTV efforts. Dems lately have sought to make his involvement an issue in the race.
The poll also underscored the hangover Dems are still facing from 2024.
The poll found 47% of voters view the Republican Party favorably, while 52% had an unfavorable opinion.
For the Dem Party, 34% had a positive view, while 62% had a negative one.
Franklin noted the party’s numbers were partly due to independents having a negative view of the party at 15-79, compared to a 33-62 split among those voters for the GOP.
Meanwhile, just 76% of self-identified Dems had a positive view of their party; 92% of Republicans had one of the GOP.
The latest Marquette University Law School sample was 36% Republican, 32% Dem and 42% independent. Franklin noted in all of 2024, the average sample was 33% Republican, 31% Dem and 36% independent.
He said a shift in how many voters identify as Republican and the Dem Party’s poor standing with the public could have implications in upcoming elections. Still, he also said the dynamic isn’t necessarily permanent. It may reflect voters still recalling an unpopular incumbent in Joe Biden and a Dem base that wants its elected officials to push back harder against Trump.
“That hurts any party,” Franklin said. “They’re blamed for the losses of the fall, and they’re blamed for not responding to Trump, at least within the Democratic coalition.”
The poll of 864 registered voters was conducted Feb. 19-26. The sample was a hybrid of 641 people from the Wisconsin voter registration list and 223 from the SSRS Opinion Panel, a sample drawn from postal addresses across the state with selected participants asked to complete the survey online.
Overall, 740 respondents completed it online, while 124 were interviewed over the phone with a live interviewer.
FiveThirtyEight rates Marquette the nation’s third-best pollster with three out of three stars.
