Rasmussen Reports has upped their polling tempo ahead of the election, and the news is very good for Ron Johnson. In a poll taken July 13 of 750 likely voters, he has pulled ahead of Russ Feingold for the first time, 47%-46%. That compares favorably to a Rasmussen late-June poll that had Feingold up 46%-45%, and a Public Policy late-June poll that had Feingold up 45%-43%. The Slimeroad Slime Machine still isn’t working, as Johnson’s favorables climbed to 51% favorable (up 19 points from June)/30% unfavorable (up 5 points from June)/+11 “Passion” Index (up 2 points from June).
The toplines are, once again, more favorable to the Democrats than the national picture. Once again, President Obama’s Wisconsin approval ratings (49% approve/51% disapprove/-14 Approval Index) are better than the national numbers (48% approve/52% disapprove/-17 Approval Index). Various other questions, from Gulf drilling to PlaceboCare, from illegal immigration to the Tea Party Movement, reveal a slightly more leftward tilt (or more properly, a lesser rightward tilt) in Wisconsin than nationally. Feingold also improved his favorables to 53% favorable (up 1 point from June)/43% unfavorable (down 2 points from June)/+5 “Passion” Index (up 5 points from June).
The news isn’t nearly as good for Dave Westlake. A couple weeks after getting to within 6 points of Feingold, Westlake now trails 51%-37%. Despite being in the race for well over a year, he is still so unknown 31% of those surveyed could not form an opinion on him, and only 13% had a strong opinion. While his overall favorability improved to 36% favorable (up 2 points from June)/31% unfavorable (unchanged from June), his “Passion” Index dropped another point to -5.
Revisions/extensions (1:39 pm 7/15/2010) – Just for grins, I decided to see if I could see whether the polls back in 1998 indicated that Mark Neumann was as close as his 2-point loss. CNN came through, and the closest Neumann was that year was a late-October Market Shares/WTMJ-TV poll that had him down 3 points. Two other contemporary polls had Feingold up 7 points, and polls earlier showed larger leads for Feingold.
That means this race is the closest for Feingold since he pulled off the upset in 1992.
Isn’t it nice that a Republican polling firm will just keep doing more polls — which always show Repubs doing better than other polls do — as a free public service? What kind of business model is this? No one pays for them? Put me down as doubtful.
Bill, you’ve been in the business long enough to know how polling works. How does the Democrat polling firm Public Policy Polling, which mirrored Rasmussen in its latest Wisconsin release, do publicly-released polls not done for a specific client? In fact, PPP doesn’t even charge for access to its crosstabs, something Rasmussen does.
It’s the internal polling for campaigns done by Rasmussen, PPP, and the rest, as well as those paid for by media outlets (cough…DailyKos/Research2000…cough), that pays for the public polls.
Westlake is the better candidate and merits support.