Wisconsin couldn't get any more 'purple' in the latest election polling

Craig Gilbert | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin is on a knife-edge politically.

It’s split over Scott Walker, the state's Republican governor.

It’s split over Tammy Baldwin, its Democratic senator.

And it’s split over their re-election races this fall.

Both those contests are toss-ups in a new poll by the Marquette University Law School. Elections come and go, but Wisconsin never seems to drift too far from its essentially “purple” persona — its default status of practically perfect division.

RELATED: Marquette poll: Tammy Baldwin, Leah Vukmir tied in Wisconsin U.S. Senate race

Every year, Gallup draws on its massive polling of American adults to publish state-by-state rankings based on key political metrics. In 2017, Wisconsin ranked right in the middle of the 50 states on ideology (how liberal or conservative its residents are), partisan identity (how Democratic or Republican they are) and their perceptions of President Donald Trump’s job performance. In short, it couldn’t get any closer to the 50- yard line in American politics.

Walker, its most successful politician in recent years, is in a dead heat right now with Democratic challenger Tony Evers, 46 percent to 46 percent, according to Marquette’s poll of likely voters released Wednesday.

That’s only fitting. When you combine all of Marquette’s polls over the past two calendar years, 47 percent of voters in Wisconsin have approved of Walker and 47 percent have disapproved.

Baldwin, the other big incumbent on the ballot, is in a near dead heat with GOP challenger Leah Vukmir, leading her 49 percent to 47 percent among likely voters.

That’s only fitting, because when you combine Marquette’s 2017 and 2018 polls, 40 percent of voters in Wisconsin have viewed Baldwin favorably and 39 percent have viewed her unfavorably.

There is a remarkable symmetry to the Walker and Baldwin numbers that says as much about the state they represent as it does about them: two incumbents from different parties facing a 50/50 electorate (and not very well-known opponents) — with their political futures utterly in play.

Close, suspenseful races are the natural condition in Wisconsin politics, thanks to a voting public that is both evenly divided and deeply polarized along party lines. At election time, most big-name politicians can count on nearly unanimous support from their own party’s voters and nearly unanimous opposition from the other party’s voters.

In the Marquette poll, Republicans support Walker 96% to 2% and Democrats support Evers 92% to 3%.

These divisions make it difficult for any politician in the state to reach or exceed 50 percent approval, because he or she is getting almost no support from the other half of the partisan divide. Walker has had tremendous political success. He has won three races for governor in a row. He has nearly universal name recognition. But he has hit the 50 percent approval mark in just 12 of 47 polls Marquette has done over the past seven years. His highest mark ever is 51.5 percent. His average annual rating since 2012 is 46 percent approval, 49 percent disapproval.

These divisions also mean that when Wisconsin has two big statewide races on the same ballot, they are generally going to look a lot alike. Walker could win or lose in November. Baldwin could win or lose. It’s conceivable that both could win.

But the Republican candidate for governor (Walker) is probably not going to perform dramatically differently from the Republican candidate for Senate (Vukmir). And the Democratic candidate for governor (Evers) is probably not going to perform very differently from the Democratic candidate for Senate (Baldwin). That’s because most voters, faced with two parties that are very far apart, are too locked into their partisan camps to split their tickets.

It’s only fitting that in the new Marquette poll, the two races look almost identical.

There have been debates over the years about whether Wisconsin was a fundamentally “blue” state. Barack Obama’s dominance, seven straight Democratic victories for president and two long-serving Democratic senators (Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold) suggested to some that the answer was yes.

There have been debates more recently about whether Wisconsin is a blue state that turned red. Walker’s victories, the GOP’s legislative dominance, Trump’s win in 2016 and a national trend of “blue-collar whites” (a huge group in Wisconsin) moving toward the Republican Party have suggested to some that the answer is yes.

November will give us more points on the trend line. If Walker wins and Baldwin loses, Wisconsin Republicans will have achieved an electoral dominance in the state they haven’t enjoyed since the 1950s.

If Baldwin wins and Walker loses, the pendulum will have swung back in Wisconsin and Democrats would claim only their third victory for governor since the 1980s.

But a lot of evidence points to a third possibility, which is that Wisconsin has been a persistently purple state that swings between the parties. Whatever happens this fall, there is little reason to think Wisconsin won’t be a huge battleground in the 2020 election, especially when three of the past five presidential contests have been decided by less than 1 percentage point.

When a state is this competitive, most elections really do come down to the two key variables that determine close races: which party turns out in higher numbers and how independents vote.

The latest Marquette Poll illustrates this calculus.

In that survey, self-described independents broke for the Democrats in both the Senate and governor’s races. Evers carried them over Walker 48 percent to 37 percent. Baldwin carried them over Vukmir 52 percent to 43 percent

That’s not good news for the GOP. But despite that, both contests were roughly even overall because the pool of likely voters interviewed for the survey contained more Republicans than Democrats. (As pollster Charles Franklin has noted, Marquette’s surveys have been drawing samples this year that are more Republican-leaning than the long-term pattern in Wisconsin).

If it turns out that the electorate in November looks like this poll — that it’s more Republican in its mix of voters than Democratic — then Walker and Vukmir could, in theory, lose independent voters and still win.

But that would be surprising since Democratic voters usually outnumber or equal Republican voters in Wisconsin and Democrats have been turning out in higher numbers in elections so far this year.

The polls will bounce around between now and November. But in the end, these are the two variables that will determine whether this essentially 50/50 state zigs left or right in 2018.

In Walker’s case, if he wins independents and wins the turnout war, he’ll be in. If he does neither, he’ll be out. And if he somehow does one but not the other, the election will look something like the poll that came out Wednesday — a jump ball.