New Marquette poll finds Trump, Biden tied with red flags for both: Biden's age, Trump's independent voter problem

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- President Joe Biden and his likely GOP challenger, former President Donald Trump, are in a dead heat according to a new poll of Wisconsin voters released Wednesday.

The Marquette Law School Poll found Biden and Trump tied among registered Wisconsin voters at 49% each. However, the underlying data showed causes for concern with both candidates nine months before Election Day in this battleground state.

For Biden, an overwhelming percentage of voters said they agree with the claim he's too old to be president. Meanwhile, a large majority of voters said they agree with the statement Trump is corrupt, and his standing with independent voters is significantly worse than his one remaining GOP primary challenger, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Among independent voters, Haley beats President Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, 58% to 36%. Those same voters favored Biden in a hypothetical rematch against Trump, 49% to 42%.

"If you have a non-Trump Republican, they had the opportunity to do a lot better against Biden," poll director Charles Franklin told reporters Wednesday. "But with Trump, it's the dead-even match that we're seeing."

Haley also led Biden among all polled voters, 57% to 41%. However, it likely doesn't matter since Trump leads Haley among Republican voters, 64% to 22% in a hypothetical GOP primary. 

Franklin said those numbers demonstrated just how much Trump has shored up the support of Republican voters. In the previous MU poll, taken last November, 38% of Republicans backed Trump as the GOP nominee compared to 11% of Haley, and 24% said they were undecided.

"The party has, to the extent that it had doubts about Trump, has decided to set those aside and move toward him," Franklin said.

Trump's struggles largely stem from 67% of respondents say they either very much or somewhat agree with the statement Trump is corrupt. 49% of respondents said the same of Biden.

For Biden, the caution signs are voters' concern about his age and a belief Trump would do a better job on some of the top issues for voters. 

Eighty-three percent of respondents say they either very much or somewhat agree with the statement Biden, 81, is too old to be president. For Trump, 77, that number was 56%.

Voters listed border security, the economy and the Israel-Hamas war among their most important issues. On the border, 54% said Trump would do a better job compared to 28% for Biden. Trump had a 21-point lead over Biden on the economy, 52% to 31%. 

Forty-four percent said Trump would do better on the Israel-Hamas war compared to 31% for Biden, but voters were evenly divided on who'd perform better overall on foreign relations, with 43% saying Trump and 42% saying Biden.

"We're seeing issues that, at the moment, seem on balance to favor Donald Trump, or at least the perceptions of how they would handle the issues," Franklin said. "But we're [also] seeing perceptions of the candidates, which hurt both of them in different ways."

Could attitudes change on border, economy?

Franklin noted voters indicated the border was a larger concern at this stage than the economy. He suggested part of that could be because voters' perception of the economy has improved since November.

In November, 27% described the economy as either excellent or good; in Wednesday's poll, 38% used either of those terms to describe the economy.

"When people see it doing pretty well, they start to be concerned with other issues," Franklin said. "And right now, you're seeing the border and migration become that competing issue."

While voters in this poll strongly favored Trump on the border, the surveying was done between January 24-31. Since then, Trump and most Republicans in Congress rejected a bipartisan border deal Senate Republican leaders brokered with Senate Democrats and the Biden administration.

While GOP critics of the plan said it didn't do enough to immediately halt a surge of migrant traffic at the border, Franklin said he was curious to see if voters' perceptions would change after Republicans shot down a deal Biden was willing to sign.

"Republicans have turned against their own bill, I think that is an opportunity for a campaign issue," Franklin said. "That's the real risk for Republicans in choosing not to give Biden a win. They may risk giving themselves a loss and put the ball in his court."

Ultimately, Franklin said one more number might swing the race in Wisconsin: 18%, which is the share of voters who said they hold an unfavorable view of both Biden and Trump. Will those voters end up casting a ballot this call? If so, who will they reluctantly support?

State-level poll results

Gov. Tony Evers continues to be unaffected by Biden's unpopularity with Wisconsin voters. While 58% said they disapprove of Biden's job performance compared to just 41% who approve of the president, Evers has a 51% approval rating. 

In November. 53% said they approve of Evers' job performance compared to 46% who disapproved, but that split was well within the 4.2% margin of error.

Evers had a considerably higher approval rating than the GOP-controlled Legislature, of which only 34% said they approve. In the November poll, the Legislature had a 40% approval rating. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has been in the spotlight after striking down the state's legislative voting maps, has a 45% approval rating with 43% saying they disapprove.

In November, the high court had a 51% approval rating. Most recently, the court received a report from its hired consultants that labeled two sets of Republican map proposals as "partisan gerrymanders," while maintaining four Democratic map submissions pass constitutional muster.

Redistricting experts have said the definition of "fair maps" can be subjective: If the maps are drawn with a goal of reflecting the results of statewide elections, the Democratic maps fit best, but that isn't necessarily the case if one were to draw maps that were blind to party affiliation, due to the clustering of liberal voters in urban areas.

Responses to the consultants' report are due by Thursday. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has called for new legislative maps to be in place by March 15 in order to accommodate primary races in the new districts.