Scott Walker Loses to Top Democrats in New Recall Poll

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/spreenkler/3180980959/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Spreenkler</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


New poll numbers are out for Wisconsin’s gubernatorial recall rumble. They’re not pretty for Gov. Scott Walker.

Overall, Wisconsinites are split on whether to Walker, 49 percent to 49 percent. In a hypothetical general election, Walker trails Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett 49 percent to 46 percent, and lags behind former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk 48 percent to 47 percent, according to a new survey by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling. The last time PPP surveyed Wisconsinites, Walker led Falk by 8 percentage points and Barrett by two.

PPP’s margin of error is 3.3 percent, which means these match-ups are essentially dead even right now. But PPP president Dean Debham said the numbers are encouraging news for Wisconsin Democrats in their push to oust Walker. “These are the most encouraging numbers we’ve found for Democrats in Wisconsin related to the Walker recall since last August,” Debnam said in a statement. “Walker’s numbers had been seeing some recovery, but now it appears they’ve turned back in the wrong direction. The big question now is whether Democrats can find a candidate to take advantage of Walker’s vulnerability.”

Even among lesser-known Wisconsin Democrats, including some who’ve given no indication that they would challenge Walker, the match-ups are close. US Congressman Ron Kind leads Walker 46-45 is the other Democrat who leads Walker, 46-45. Secretary of State Doug LaFollette, former US Congressman David Obey, and state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout all trail by just one or two percentage points.

Among the Democrats, the winner in these latest poll numbers is arguably Tom Barrett. Not only did he open up a lead on Walker, but he would cruise to victory in a hypothetical Democratic primary, beating Kathleen Falk 45-18. A January PPP poll showed Barrett ahead of Falk 46-27.

PPP also found that more Wisconsinites dislike Walker than like him, 52 percent to 47 percent. That means Walker’s fate could very well rest in the hands of independent voters. Problem is, independents don’t think that highly of Walker—55 percent dislike him compared to 43 percent who support him. What remains to be seen is whether tens of millions of dollars in TV ads, direct mail, and other messaging funded by mega-donors such as David Koch and Bob Perry can win over those independents in time for the spring election.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate