Craig Gilbert

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Awash in controversy and dogged by divisions in his own party, Donald Trump has slipped further behind Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin and now trails her by 7 points in the latest survey of likely voters by Marquette University Law School.

Clinton leads Trump 44% to 37%, with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson at 9% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 3%.

The new poll was taken as the furor was erupting over a tape of Trump in 2005 bragging in crude terms about groping women.

The poll’s timing made it a natural test of the impact of the tape, since about half the voters were interviewed Thursday before the tape surfaced, and about half were interviewed just as the story was breaking or after it was widely reported.

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The pattern is dramatic: Clinton trailed Trump in Wisconsin by 1 point in Thursday's polling before the tape broke; she led by 6 on Friday as the story was getting out; and she led by 19 on Saturday and Sunday, after the story had gone viral.

“We have really good evidence that there was, in fact, a substantial shift,” said Charles Franklin, who conducted the poll.

Franklin called it “a pretty widespread” turn away from Trump “across demographic groups, from evangelicals and men and noncollege whites to women and independents and so on.”

Said Franklin: “The real question is … is it enduring or not? And that’s what we don’t know.”

For Trump, the damage was especially striking among women, where his deficit grew from 9 points the day before the tape came out to 33 points in the two days after.

He also lost a huge amount of ground among Protestant evangelicals, where he went from 40-point lead over Clinton the day before the tape to a 16-point lead in the two days after.

He lost more ground among blue-collar whites (those without a college degree) than he did among white college grads — even though blue-collar voters remain a much better group for him overall.

The shifts in the poll for these different voting groups are subject to a large margin of error, since they involve smaller samples of voters.

But the overall pattern across groups is the same — a real erosion for Trump.

Trump did not lose ground among Republicans as the story of the tape was getting out, but he did slip sharply among independents.

Clinton has now led Trump in every one of the 12 polls Marquette has taken since last summer in matchups between the two, another bad sign for him in Wisconsin.

The race had closed to a 3-point margin last month.

But since the last survey, Trump has suffered a dreadful October by historical campaign standards. His performance in his first debate with Clinton went over badly. The lewd tape surfaced last Friday. His deficit has been growing in national polls.

The new Marquette survey reflects the impact of the first debate, but not the second, which took place Sunday night. Nor does it reflect the outbreak of Republican Party infighting this week, with House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville telling colleagues Monday that he will no longer defend Trump, and Trump then bashing Ryan as weak, ineffective and disloyal.

Democrats are confident enough of their presidential prospects here that Clinton hasn’t paid a single general election visit to Wisconsin, while Trump has made three and plans another next week.

One broad takeaway from the poll is that the fundamentals of the race in Wisconsin remain persistently troublesome for Trump.

While Clinton continues to be widely mistrusted (only 29% say she’s honest), her overall image is less negative than Trump’s.

And Trump is stuck at dismal levels of popularity with women (28% view him favorably in the new survey), college grads (25% favorable), independents (27% favorable) and moderates (19% favorable).

He also continues to suffer from a partisan loyalty gap.

In the latest poll, 76% of Republicans are supporting him against Clinton, while 90% of Democrats are supporting Clinton against Trump.

Finally, Trump's share of the vote in a four-way race with Clinton, Johnson and Stein has been chronically below 40%: it was 37% in July, 34% in early August, 38% later in August, 38% in mid-September and 37% in October.

These are all patterns that will have to change for Trump to have a shot at Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes.

Marquette polled 878 likely voters last Thursday through Sunday. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 points.