Another major poll of this year’s Wisconsin Senate race is out, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) is losing once again.
Johnson is running against Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes, who currently serves as Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor. In new polling from the Trafalgar Group, which is a Republican-funded pollster, Barnes is ahead by roughly two percentage points, with 3.5 percent of overall respondents saying they were undecided. Among a little over one thousand likely general election voters, Barnes nabbed 49.4 percent of the support, and Johnson got 47.1 percent. The polling also found Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers ahead of his Republican challenger Tim Michels, although Evers’s lead was even smaller. Evers nabbed 48 percent of the overall support, and Michels got 47.5 percent. Meanwhile, 2.7 percent of respondents identified themselves as undecided in the Wisconsin governor’s race.
Only three major polls of the Wisconsin Senate race have emerged since the primaries, and Barnes led in all of them. His biggest lead was in polling from Marquette University Law School; in that pollster’s numbers, Barnes was up by seven percent. The polling adds to an already generally favorable electoral environment for Dems in this year’s Senate races. Dem candidates in Pennsylvania and Arizona are consistently out-raising and out-polling their Trump-backed GOP challengers, sometimes by a lot. A recent Pennsylvania poll from Franklin & Marshall College put Dem contender and current Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman nine percentage points ahead of GOP’er Mehmet Oz, who lived in New Jersey for decades before making a comparatively recent move to Pennsylvania. That lead is seen when respondents merely indicating a lean towards one of the candidates are included in results. Initial results, before some were asked follow-up questions to clarify if they leaned towards a candidate, found Fetterman up by 13 percentage points.
“Look, my friends, we offer a starkly different version and vision of this country — a vision of a better America that’s within our reach, that’s within our hands if we just vote,” President Joe Biden said in a recent rally speech in Maryland. “If we elect two more senators, [and if] we keep the House… Folks, look, we’ll codify Roe v. Wade. We’ll ban assault weapons. We’ll protect Social Security and Medicare. We’ll pass universal pre-K. We’ll restore the Childcare Tax Credit. We’ll protect voting rights. We’ll pass election reform and make sure no one — no one — ever has the opportunity to steal an election again.” Adding two Senators to Democrats’ total would hopefully give the Dems the majority needed to make changes to the filibuster to make progress easier on a simple majority basis. A full 48 current Democratic Senators (out of 50) already indicated a willingness to support at least some filibuster changes.
