Bush, Kerry in tight race
I was thinking Wisconsin would be easier this time around, thinking that the closenes of 2000 had more to do with the quality of the Gore campaign since we were able to win the governor's mansion in 2002 but...
Bush led Kerry 47% to 41% in the poll, with independent Ralph Nader capturing 5%.
Bush's lead was slightly smaller - 49% to 45% - in a one-on-one matchup with Kerry.
That points to Nader's potential to hurt Kerry in an extremely tight election. When Democrat Al Gore carried Wisconsin by two-tenths of a percentage point in 2000, Nader drew 4% of the vote.
Since the last Badger Poll was taken in late January and early February, Kerry has nailed down the Democratic nomination and both sides have embarked on early and aggressive ad campaigns in the nation's most competitive states. The largest concentration of swing states is in the Midwest, and Wisconsin is in the heart of that battleground belt.
In Kerry's case, a barrage of Bush ads, many of them attacking his record on defense and taxes, seems to have had an impact.
In the last Badger Poll, only 18% said they had an unfavorable impression of Kerry. In the new poll, 34% said so. Those saying they had a favorable impression of the Massachusetts senator dropped from 42% to 37%.
But the poll contains warning signs for both candidates.
Negative views of Bush are up, too, though the change is less dramatic, and less recent. The Republican incumbent faced a barrage of negative ads during the Democratic primaries, including Wisconsin's in mid-February. Since Bush launched his own multimillion-dollar ad blitz a month ago, he has outspent the opposition. But liberal groups supporting Kerry have aired ads attacking Bush on jobs and the war in Iraq.
In October 2003, 60% of those polled in the state viewed Bush favorably, 34% unfavorably.
But in three polls since then, the gap between those two numbers has narrowed each time, with 52% now viewing Bush favorably and 41% viewing him unfavorably. Bush's job performance ratings are also as low as they have been since polling began in early 2002, though they've changed little in the past two months.
This question for people from the state, Does the state have a ideological divide? In New York, once you get an hour north of New York City, you might as well be in Kentucky in the upstate area. I know Madison is supposed to be the heart of the left in Wisconsin, but once you get away from it does it become a urban-rural divide?
One BIG warning about this poll. The wording of the methodology stuck out at me, "...a statewide survey of 500 voting-age adults taken March 23 to 31."