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Gov. Scott Walker owed much of his victory in the 2012 recall fight to the big margins he piled up in the small cities, towns and countryside of northern and western Wisconsin.

But replicating that striking performance two years later is proving difficult.

One big reason this race for governor is closer than the last one is that Walker has lost ground in the Green Bay, Wausau and La Crosse media markets, according to an analysis of 2014 polling data.

For example, the governor won the Green Bay media market by 23 points in the 2012 recall election. But this year he is leading the region by 14 points in the combined polling that Marquette University Law School has done from May through September of this year.

In 2012, Walker won the Wausau/Rhinelander market by 18 points. But he is leading by only 1 point in the 2014 polling.

And two years ago, Walker won the La Crosse/Eau Claire markets by 9 points. But he is trailing Democrat Mary Burke by 3 points in the 2014 polling.

Why the drop-off?

Much of the answer lies in the fact that the governor over-performed in these areas in 2012 compared to how Republicans typically do in big statewide races, and even compared to his earlier 2010 victory.

That performance was always going to be hard to duplicate. Strategists on both sides believe it was boosted by at least two factors that aren’t present today.

One was running against the mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett. Walker highlighted Milwaukee’s crime and joblessness in his campaign ads, and that message may have resonated in many rural and suburban areas far from the state’s biggest city. Republicans also attacked Barrett over his support for gun control.

But perhaps a bigger factor involved voter attitudes about the recall itself. Many voters throughout the state had reservations about the recall process. Those concerns were especially strong among rural voters, the 2012 exit poll shows. Walker ended up winning the rural and small-town vote by 28 points — the biggest margin in any race for governor or president in Wisconsin since the 1990s.

Reservations about the recall were especially sharp in northeastern Wisconsin, home to a mix of mostly suburban and rural voters from the Fox Valley north. In the 2012 exit poll, 76% of voters in northeastern Wisconsin said recalls should only be used for “misconduct” or “never” — the highest number of any region in the state.

For these and other reasons, Walker dominated in 2012 in much of the north and west. He won the Green Bay media market by 23 points in 2010 compared to 16 in 2010. He won the Wausau/Rhinelander media market by 18 points compared to 12 in 2010. And he won the La Crosse/Eau Claire media market — a region that often leans Democratic — by almost 9 points, compared to 5 in 2010.

The governor made sizable gains in those areas in 2012 even though his statewide margin was almost identical to 2010.

To track Walker’s support this year in the same parts of the state, Marquette pollster Charles Franklin combined four statewide polls from May, July, August and September, creating a large enough sample (over 3,200 registered voters) to gauge public opinion within Wisconsin’s five key TV markets.

Two years ago, a similar pre-election analysis of Marquette’s polling found Walker surging in the Wausau and La Crosse markets, which was borne out later in the election results.

This time, the numbers suggest the governor’s support is reverting in these areas to more typical levels for a Republican candidate.

Walker leads Burke 53% to 39% in the Green Bay market in Marquette’s polling since May, based on a combined sample of 603 voters in the region.

He is essentially tied with Burke — leading her 47% to 46% — in the Wausau/Rhinelander market, based on a sample of 291 voters in the region.

And he trails Burke 45% to 48% in the La Crosse/Eau Claire market, based on a sample of 285 voters in the region.

Results for the state’s two Minnesota media markets — the Wisconsin counties outside the Twin Cities, which are GOP-leaning; and the counties outside Duluth, which are Democratic-leaning — were not included because those areas are too small to produce meaningful polling data.

Taken together, the polling numbers in the three northern and western media markets suggest a more competitive battle than in 2012 for voters living outside the state’s two big political hot spots, the Milwaukee and Madison metro areas, where the geographic base of both parties can be found and where the majority of votes in the state are cast.

The Wausau/Rhinelander market supplied only 8% of the votes in the 2012 race for governor. So did the La Crosse/Eau Claire market. The much bigger Green Bay market supplied 19%.

But all these areas matters hugely in statewide elections. They are home to a higher share of swing voters than the ultra-Democratic counties of Milwaukee and Dane and the hyper-Republican counties of Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee. Some of the state’s “swingiest” counties can be found in the northeast and southwest.

And the campaigns are competing fiercely for those voters. They are spending more on broadcast TV in both the La Crosse and Wausau markets than they are in the much larger Madison market because they believe voters in those smaller markets are more persuadable. The La Crosse/Eau Claire market has received about 20% of the broadcast TV spending since June, even though it provided only 8% of the voters in the last governor’s race.

The TV spending in these markets is far more competitive than it was in 2012 when Republicans aired roughly twice as many ads in the state. Democrats have actually outspent Republicans in the Green Bay, Wausau and La Crosse markets from June 1 through Sept. 16, though that could change with the National Rifle Association and the Republican Governors Association beginning to air ads on Walker’s behalf.

Scott Walker doesn’t have to do as well as he did in 2012 in northern and western Wisconsin to win a third race for governor.

But polls this year suggest those voters are more up for grabs than they were two years ago. And that’s a major reason that Wisconsin may have the tightest governor’s race in the country.

Follow Craig Gilbert on Twitter @WisVoter