Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic challenger Russ Feingold both have vulnerabilities in how the public perceives their approach to terrorism. Some see Johnson as too hawkish, while others say Feingold is too dovish. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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With President Barack Obama placing guns on the election agenda, the issue could animate this year’s U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin between Ron Johnson and Russ Feingold.

The two men have sharp differences over guns, including expanded background checks, which Johnson opposes and Feingold supports.

Johnson, the GOP incumbent, says Feingold is “much more willing to restrict our Second Amendment rights than I am.”

Feingold, a Democrat, says Johnson is “unwilling to disagree with the gun lobby, period — he is with them every time, whether they are right or wrong.”

But the Johnson-Feingold race also illustrates how the partisan lines on guns are far from absolute.

Feingold has a long history of touting Second Amendment rights, and cast numerous “pro-gun” votes in his three terms in the Senate. He voted against renewing the assault weapon ban after supporting it early in his career. He’s a critic of banning gun sales to people on the government’s no-fly list, another stand that separates him from most Democrats in Congress.

Feingold’s mixed record on guns is unusual for a liberal Democrat in this era, when legislative votes on controversial gun measures tend to be highly partisan.

But it may be less surprising when you consider the large number of gun owners in Wisconsin — many of them Democrats and independents.

Polling in recent years shows just how much gun ownership crosses political lines in this state. It also shows that views about some gun laws cross party lines. Many Democratic voters are broadly supportive of gun rights. And both here and nationally, most Republicans back universal background checks on gun sales.

Here are some highlights from Wisconsin polling data since 2012 provided by Charles Franklin, who conducts the Marquette University Law School survey:

Gun ownership by party. Republicans are more likely to have guns at home than Democrats, based on the combined results of four statewide polls of more than 3,000 registered voters in 2012 and 2013 in which Marquette asked about gun ownership.

Statewide, 54% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters answered yes when asked if they have any guns, rifles or pistols in their home, compared to 36% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters.

This “gun gap” was especially large in more populous southern Wisconsin, where Republicans are almost twice as likely as Democrats to live in a household with firearms. In the city of Milwaukee, 33% of Republicans but only 17% of Democrats said they had one or more guns at home. In the 11-county Madison media market, 59% of Republicans but only 33% of Democrats said they had a gun at home.

The gun gap was far smaller in the more rural north, where gun ownership rates are higher. In the 16-county Green Bay market, 54% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats said they live in households with guns. Outside the big media markets of Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay — in the state’s most northern and western counties — 69% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats said they had guns at home.

In short, Democrats are almost as likely as Republicans to live in gun households throughout much of rural Wisconsin. A Democrat in northern or western Wisconsin is more likely to have a gun at home than a Republican in eastern Wisconsin.

Gun ownership and Obama. Obama’s approval rating in these Marquette polls was 41% among registered voters with guns at home and 58% among voters who didn’t have guns at home.

But that approval gap was more about partisanship than gun ownership: because gun owners were a more Republican group, they were less likely to support Obama. The gap disappears after controlling for party identification.

For example, Democrats in gun households were virtually as “pro-Obama” (84% approval) as Democrats in households without guns (86%). Obama’s approval ratings in these four polls was the exact same — 38% — among independent voters in gun households as it was among independents who don’t have guns at home.

Gun views and partisanship. When Marquette polled on the assault weapon ban in 2013, there was a huge partisan gap between Republicans and Republican-leaning voters (36% in favor) and Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters (70% in favor).

But the gap was far smaller on the issue of universal background checks, which was backed by 75% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats.

What do all these polling patterns suggest about the Johnson-Feingold race?

For one, gun households are a huge constituency in Wisconsin, suggesting the power of the “gun vote.” But they are also a politically diverse constituency, meaning gun owners don’t vote in a bloc.

In Marquette’s 2012-’13 polling, voters in gun households made up 44% of all registered voters; another 50% said they didn’t have guns at home and 6% refused to answer the question.

In the 2012 Edison Research exit poll of presidential voters, gun households comprised 55% of the Wisconsin electorate. Obama lost these voters, but by a modest margin — 7 points. His winning margin among voters without guns at home was overwhelming: 31 points.

There is no way of knowing today what impact, if any, the gun debate will have on the 2016 Senate race in Wisconsin. But it arguably poses risks for both candidates.

Johnson’s opposition to expanded or universal background checks puts him out of step on that issue with most voters. In a 2013 Marquette poll done almost five months after the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, almost six in 10 registered voters disapproved of Johnson’s vote against expanding background checks.

For Feingold, the risk is that the people whose votes are driven by gun issues tend to be staunch opponents of gun restrictions. The National Rifle Association, which opposed Feingold and backed Johnson in 2010, is a politically active and powerful force in Wisconsin and nationally. Despite the lopsided public support for universal background checks, national polls have found some decline in broad measures of support for gun control.

In an interview, Johnson said he supports background checks for the “vast majority” of gun sales, but argued the plan favored by Obama and congressional Democrats “went too far in restricting private exchanges between private individuals.” He called the existence of loopholes in the background check system exaggerated. Johnson opposed expanded background checks in 2013 and missed a vote on the issue last month, but said he would have opposed it again.

Johnson argued that gun violence in general is better addressed by combating the drug problem, and that mass shootings are better addressed by reforming the mental health system. Those things “would be far more effective than President Obama’s unilateral actions on gun control.”

Said Johnson: “We all want to prevent these tragedies. We’d all love to reduce the murders (happening) primarily in large cities, and a lot of them are drug-related.”

Johnson called Obama’s executive actions last week “pretty limited,” but he said the recent spikes in gun sales reflected a natural fear on the part of people that Obama and his party would go much further in curbing gun rights if they could get away with it politically.

The incumbent’s sharpest criticism of Feingold over guns has been aimed at Feingold’s votes for what Johnson calls “anti-gun” Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court.

“My first bottom line is ... every individual has a right to defend themselves and every individual has a right to choose how they want to defend themselves and their family,” said Johnson.

In an interview, Feingold said something similar — that “my first test” when it comes to gun measures is “whether something that is proposed violates the legitimate right to bear arms.”

Feingold has long taken a position that many gun control advocates ardently disagree with — that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms. It wasn’t until 2008 that the U.S. Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote affirmed that view.

Among his “pro-gun” stands as a senator, Feingold voted to overturn a ban on firearms in national parks, to repeal D.C.’s gun ban, and to make it easier for people with concealed carry permits in their home states to use those permits in other states.

Feingold says, “I want us to be able to prevent terrorists from getting guns but if we’re going to do it through the no-fly list we’re going to have to improve the no-fly list,” which he says lacks standards and safeguards to protect people from being listed without sufficient cause. That position puts Feingold closer to Republicans in Congress than to Obama.

On the side of gun regulation, Feingold backed waiting periods on gun purchases and background checks for gun shows when he was in the Senate. He opposed a GOP-backed bill to shield gun makers from liability lawsuits over the use of their products, a measure he calls “completely irresponsible.”

Feingold says Obama’s executive actions last week are reasonable steps and says the president is showing leadership on the issue. He says he agrees with Obama that there is a “crisis” of gun violence in America.

“Sometimes I voted with Republicans on issues relating to (guns) and sometimes with Democrats, because I was following what I believed,” Feingold said. “What’s happening now is that the Senate and Congress are so broken they can’t even come up with a common-sense closing of a loophole to try to deal with background checks.”

Feingold said, “I don’t think (guns are) as divisive as people think. I think most people, including hunters and gun owners and NRA members, believe reasonable regulations that respect the right to bear arms are OK.”

Follow Craig Gilbert on Twitter @WisVoter