Two new polls released Wednesday show the presidential race tightening in Wisconsin, with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton losing ground to Republican rival Donald Trump in the last month.
According to the August Marquette University Law School Poll, Clinton leads Trump 45 to 42 percent with likely voters and 42 to 37 percent amongst registered voters. This is a significant shift from earlier in the month, where Clinton’s lead with both registered and likely voters was in the double digits.
This month’s results were the clearest indicator that Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein could shape the results in Wisconsin. Ten percent of those surveyed supported Johnson, while Stein checked in at 4 percent.
The poll is a sign that Clinton’s post-convention bump has ended, Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, said.
“After a strong bump in Clinton’s favor following the national party conventions, the electorate in Wisconsin has returned to about where the vote stood in July, prior to the conventions,” Franklin said in introducing the results.
A separate Monmouth University poll released earlier in the day showed a similar tight presidential race, with Clinton leading Trump by five points.
The two polls paint very different pictures, however, of Wisconsin’s Senate race, where Democrat Russ Feingold is running against incumbent Republican Ron Johnson to reclaim the seat he lost in 2010.
The Marquette University poll showed Feingold with a four-point lead, a slight decrease from the seven-point advantage he held earlier in the month. But the Monmouth Poll showed Feingold leading Johnson by 13 points, a surprisingly large bump for the Democrat. While this is the first Monmouth poll this year, the Marquette poll has never had Feingold with a double-digit lead.
“It looks like Feingold could get a bit of redemption for that stinging loss in 2010,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
At the state level, the Marquette poll showed Gov. Scott Walker received a slight boost to his approval rating, with 43 percent of Wisconsinites saying they were pleased with Walker’s leadership. This is an increase of five points from last month, when 38 percent approved of the governor’s work.
