Dem poll: Republicans turning on Scott Walker

By Greg Sargent

Everyone has already blogged on the forthcoming poll from the Dem firm Public Policy Polling, which finds major buyer's remorse in Wisconsin, with voters saying they'd support Scott Walker's opponent by 52-45 if they could hold a do-over election.

But I think this nugget from the poll is even more important, in terms of what lies ahead:

It's actually Republicans, more so than Democrats or independents, whose shifting away from Walker would allow Barrett to win a rematch if there was one today. Only 3% of the Republicans we surveyed said they voted for Barrett last fall but now 10% say they would if they could do it over again. That's an instance of Republican union voters who might have voted for the GOP based on social issues or something else last fall trending back toward Democrats because they're putting pocketbook concerns back at the forefront and see their party as at odds with them on those because of what's happened in the last month.

This is a Dem poll, but this finding -- that Republicans are turning on Walker -- is echoed by Gallup. Last week Gallup's national poll found that a startling 41 percent of Republicans oppose Walker's plan to roll back public employee bargaining rights.

The reason this matters is that in the days ahead, Dems and labor are going to intensify pressure on Republican state senators to break with Walker and support some kind of compromise route out of the current impasse. Walker himself seems to recognize this is a potential problem: On his call with the fake Koch, he acknowledged that Republicans in swing areas would need to be propped up by aggressive messaging.

Walker himself will not budge in this standoff. The only way Dems and labor can force a compromise is to peel off Republican senators. While the swing in Wisconsin GOP voters against Walker is not huge -- seven points -- it's something, and makes this possibility marginally more likely.

