Citizen-Dave-Guv-race-poll-06282018.indd
Nobody move! Since the last poll this spring there was virtually no movement among the Democratic candidates running for governor. “Undecided” continues to lead with about a third of the vote while state schools Superintendent Tony Evers holds steady as the choice of about one quarter of those polled. Everybody else is at 7 percent or less.
Evers isn’t sealing the deal. There’s some indication that Evers is leading mostly because of strong name recognition due to his previous statewide runs for his office. About 40 percent of Democratic voters knew enough about him to form an opinion. That may not sound very good, but the next highest candidate was at 28 percent. Still, there’s little reason to believe that Evers’ 25 percent support is very solid. If voters learn more about other candidates they could peel off.
Money can’t buy you love. According to the last campaign finance reports nobody spent more money than Milwaukee businessman Andy Gronik and Rep. Dana Wachs of Eau Claire. But the Marquette poll found that 87 percent of voters didn’t know enough about Gronik to form an opinion of him and 85 percent thought the same of Wachs. Both candidates dropped out last week.
Roys showing was disappointing. It looks like the only candidate with any kind of momentum right now is former Madison state Rep. Kelda Roys. Earlier this month she won the straw poll at the state Democratic convention by a wide margin and Wisconsin’s Choice, a liberal group linked to Bernie Sanders, included her in a group of four candidates that might get the group’s endorsement. Both of those things happened before the poll was taken and since then she has received the backing of Emily’s List and the endorsement of Gronik, after he dropped out. But she still only mustered 2 percent in the poll. Maybe there just hasn’t been enough time for her successes to translate into support in a poll, but I would have thought she’d be in the double digits by now.
Maybe money can buy you love. It’s likely that the reason for the lack of movement is that nobody has had enough money to buy a lot of television advertising. Look for candidates to spend what they’ve got in the last few weeks before the Aug. 14 primary. With Gronik and Wachs — who could afford to fund some of those ad buys themselves — out of the race, that would seem to give an advantage to Matt Flynn, who has raised more money than anyone; Mahlon Mitchell, who has union money; and Roys, who can raise national bucks through Emily’s List.
With Flynn’s candidacy probably fatally wounded by his association with the Milwaukee Archdiocese pedophile priest scandal, that could leave Roys and Mitchell vying with Evers, the candidate with the greatest name recognition, for the nomination.
