WATERTOWN, Wis. — New polling shows Donald Trump has the edge among both early and Election Day in-person Wisconsin voters as the state continues to see historic levels of pre-election balloting.
The Marquette University Law School poll indicates a tightening in the presidential race as Kamala Harris’ lead among likely voters shrinks to 1 point, down from 4 in September.
In the school’s final pre-election poll, Harris 50% of likely voters back Harris, while Trump gets 49%.
In late September the veep got 52% to Trump’s 48% among the same cohort, but the race is still in a dead heat hurdling toward Election Day, with both sets of results landing within the 4.4-point margin of error.
Although early in-person voting is off the charts this cycle since its Oct. 22 start date, there’s no way to estimate which candidate has the edge, since Wisconsin doesn’t register voters by party affiliation.
Still, the Marquette poll gives some hints as to how voters plan to cast their ballot.
Among likely voters, 52% of those who plan to vote early and in person favor Trump, compared to 47% for Harris. Trump supporters also take the lead among those who plan to vote on Election Day, 56% to Harris’ 44%.
Absentee voters give Harris the largest early voting advantage, with 70% backing Harris and 30% voting Trump.
Wisconsin passed the one million mark in early voting on Wednesday, recording 1,109,037 absentee ballots returned. Of those, 609,461 were early, in-person votes — a 32% increase for early in-person voting and a 28% overall decrease for all early voting (including absentee by mail) from the same time in 2020.
Wisconsin’s record-high turnout in the pandemic election of 2020 was 3.3 million, meaning voters have already cast one-third of the ballots of the last presidential election’s turnout less than a week before the election.
Wisconsin’s same-day voter registration will be another wild card on Election Day.
Democratic enthusiasm ticked up from September’s poll — 75%, up from 71% — while Republican enthusiasm stayed virtually the same, dropping one point down from 67% to 66%.
Pollster Charles Franklin said Wednesday that this year’s enthusiasm levels are on track with 2020’s, which could indicate Wisconsin’s record 2020 turnout could be replicated on Election Day.
Franklin also noted that independents’ enthusiasm in the latest survey plummeted from September’s poll, from 50% to 36%.
A breakdown of group polling shows a considerable 26-point gender gap among voters, giving Trump a 12-point advantage with men and Harris a 14-point advantage with women. That’s actually smaller than in both 2016 and 2020, when the gender gaps were 30 and 32 points respectively.
Pooling registered voters from the July-October surveys, the VP surges ahead of the ex-prez among city dwellers (Harris +36), voters aged 18-29 (Harris +22), black voters (Harris +64) and the college-educated (Harris +18).
Trump takes the lead among rural and small-town voters (Trump +23), non-college voters (+7), and born-again protestants (Trump +60).
While Franklin said negative campaigning likely contributed to a slight dip in favorability for the candidates, their respective speeches, negative ads, and campaign rallies have not changed the perceived characteristics of Harris and Trump much among voters since Harris stepped up to the top of the Democratic ticket in July.
For example, Trump comes out ahead for a “strong record of accomplishments” (53% to 45%) and “is a strong leader” (55% to 50%).
Harris takes the lead for “has the right temperament to be president” (56% to 45%) and “is intelligent” (59% to 53%).
Harris stumped in the safely blue territory of Madison on Wednesday night while Trump rallied with former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre in one of the GOP’s top six strongholds — Brown County.
Both campaigns will look to gin up votes in Milwaukee Friday night with competing campaign rallies in the Democratic stronghold.
